were not usual, and therefore she was careful to avoid being seen as
she went; but had she been interrogated she would have persevered.
Who had a right to stop her?

But where should she go? The reader may perhaps remember that once
when Mr. Fenwick first found this poor girl, after her flight from
home and her great disgrace, she had expressed a desire to go to the
mill and just look at it,--even if she might do no more than that.
The same idea was now in her mind, but as she left the city she had
no concerted plan. There were two things between which she must
choose at once,--either to go to London, or not to go to London. She
had money enough for her fare, and perhaps a few shillings over. In
a dim way she did understand that the choice was between going to
the devil at once,--and not going quite at once; and then, weakly,
wistfully, with uncertain step, almost without an operation of her
mind, she did not take the turn which, from the end of Trotter's
Buildings, would have brought her to the Railway Station, but did
take that which led her by the Three Honest Men out on to the Devizes
road,--the road which passes across Salisbury Plain, and leads from
the city to many Wiltshire villages,--of which Bullhampton is one.

She walked slowly, but she walked nearly the whole day. Nothing could
be more truly tragical than the utterly purposeless tenour of her
day,--and of her whole life. She had no plan,--nothing before her;
no object even for the evening and night of that very day in which
she was wasting her strength on the Devizes road. It is the lack of
object, of all aim, in the lives of the houseless wanderers that
gives to them the most terrible element of their misery. Think of it!
To walk forth with, say, ten shillings in your pocket,--so that there
need be no instant suffering from want of bread or shelter,--and
have no work to do, no friend to see, no place to expect you, no
duty to accomplish, no hope to follow, no bourn to which you can
draw nigher,--except that bourn which, in such circumstances, the
traveller must surely regard as simply the end of his weariness! But
there is nothing to which humanity cannot attune itself. Men can
live upon poison, can learn to endure absolute solitude, can bear
contumely, scorn, and shame, and never show it. Carry Brattle had
already become accustomed to misery, and as she walked she thought
more of the wretchedness of the present hour, of her weary feet, of
her hunger,