e warren and
leading to the high road and village. Looking out thence, in winter when
the trees were bare, she could see Deadham church, crowning its
monticule, part of the sloping graveyard and, below these in the middle
distance, the roofs and gables of the village street.

To-day the view was obliterated. For here, at the river level, mist and
drizzle took the form of fog. Opaque, chill and dank, it drifted in
continuous, just perceptible, undulations past and in at the open
casement. Soon the air of the room grew thick and whitish, the dark oak
furniture and the floor boards furred with moisture. Yet, her methodical
closure of the house complete, Lesbia Faircloth elected to sit in full
inward sweep of it, drawing a straight-backed chair, mounted on roughly
carpentered rockers, close to the window.

A handsome woman still, though in her late fifties, erect and of
commanding presence, her figure well-proportioned if somewhat massive.
Her dark hair showed no grey. Her rather brown skin was clear, smooth and
soft in texture. Her eyes clear, too, watchful and reticent; on
occasion--such as the driving of a business bargain say, or of a drunken
client--hard as flint. Her mouth, a wholesome red, inclined to fullness;
but had been governed to straightness of line--will dominant, not only in
her every movement, but in repose as she now sat, the chair rockers at a
backward tilt, her capable and well-shaped hands folded on her black
apron in the hollow of her lap.

Putting aside all work for once, and permitting herself a space of
undisturbed leisure, she proceeded to cast up her account with love and
life in as clear-headed, accurate a fashion as she would have cast up the
columns of cash-book or ledger--and found the balance on the credit side.
So finding it, she turned her head and looked across the room at the wide
half-tester wooden bed, set against the inner wall--the white crochet
counterpane of which, an affair of intricate fancy patterns and
innumerable stitches, loomed up somewhat ghostly and pallid through the
gloom. A flicker of retrospective victory passed across her face,
attesting old scores as paid. For there, through sleepless nights,
nursing the ardours and disgust of her young womanhood, she lay barren
beside her apple-cheeked, piping-voiced spouse, his wife in name only.
There later, times having, as by miracle, changed for her, she gave
birth to her son.

If somewhat pre-christian in instinct and in na