abs at the station till the express
came in at six o'clock.

Carmel thanked him, and turned away with her eyes full of tears. Owing
to her Sicilian education she was not accustomed to going about by
herself. England was still more or less of a strange country to her, and
she did not know the ways of the land. Lilias, in her place, would have
gone to the principal hotel, explained who she was, and asked the
manager to find some sort of carriage to convey her back to school. Such
a course never occurred to Carmel, however; instead, she tied her
numerous parcels together, blinked back her tears, set her teeth, and
started forth to walk.

Fortunately, there was no mistaking the high road, and it was still
comparatively early. If she put her best foot foremost she might
reasonably expect to reach Chilcombe before dark. She had soon left the
houses of Glazebrook behind, and was passing between hedges and fields.
For the first mile and a half all went well; she was a little tired, but
rather pleased with her own pluck. According to Sicilian customs, which
are almost eastern in their guardianship of signorinas, it was an
unheard-of thing for a young lady in her position to take a country walk
without an escort. The remembrance of the beggars and footpads that
lurked about Sicilian roads gave her uneasy twinges, and though she had
been told of the comparative safety of British highways, her heart beat
considerably when she passed anybody, and she scurried along in a
flutter lest some ill-intentioned person should stop and speak to her.
The farther she went from the town the fewer people were on the road,
and for quite half a mile she had met nobody at all. She had been going
steadily down a steep hill, and at the bottom she stepped suddenly into
a great belt of fog that lay like a white wall in front of her. It was
as if she had passed into a country of dreams. She could scarcely see
the hedges, and all round was a dense mass of mist, clammy and cold and
difficult to breathe. It was silent, too, for no sound seemed to travel
through it, not a bird twittered, and no animal stirred in the fields.
Carmel felt as utterly alone as if she were on the surface of the moon.
All the familiar objects of the landscape were blotted out. It was still
light, but this white thick mist was worse than darkness. She stamped
along for the sake of hearing her own footsteps. She wished she had a
dog with her. She kept to the left-hand side of the ro