. Royall sat in the porch,
Verena beside him, her old hands crossed on her patched skirt. As
Charity went down the steps Mr. Royall called after her: "Where you
going?" She could easily have answered: "To Orma's," or "Down to the
Targatts'"; and either answer might have been true, for she had no
purpose. But she swept on in silence, determined not to recognize his
right to question her.

At the gate she paused and looked up and down the road. The darkness
drew her, and she thought of climbing the hill and plunging into
the depths of the larch-wood above the pasture. Then she glanced
irresolutely along the street, and as she did so a gleam appeared
through the spruces at Miss Hatchard's gate. Lucius Harney was there,
then--he had not gone down to Hepburn with Mr. Miles, as she had at
first imagined. But where had he taken his evening meal, and what had
caused him to stay away from Mr. Royall's? The light was positive proof
of his presence, for Miss Hatchard's servants were away on a holiday,
and her farmer's wife came only in the mornings, to make the young man's
bed and prepare his coffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting at
this moment. To know the truth Charity had only to walk half the length
of the village, and knock at the lighted window. She hesitated a minute
or two longer, and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's.

She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect anyone who might be
coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed over
to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she
felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal
secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed
unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front
glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of
light on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in Miss
Hatchard's sitting-room; but she now saw that it shone through a window
at the farther corner of the house. She did not know the room to which
this window belonged, and she paused under the trees, checked by a sense
of strangeness. Then she moved on, treading softly on the short grass,
and keeping so close to the house that whoever was in the room, even if
roused by her approach, would not be able to see her.

The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised arch. She leaned
close to the trellis, and parting the sprays of clematis that cove