she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
It's a good eight miles of a walk."

"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list
and quality of the horses for sale.

Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for.
Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a
baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.

"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson,"
said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans
walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness
of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.

CHAPTER XIV

In the afternoon of the following day Anne entered the common room of
the Infirmary. In this large room, with high windows spotlessly clean, a
fireplace at one end in which a sufficiently generous fire was burning,
and before which were two wicker cradles; women for the most part in
extreme old age of body rather than years were sitting in every possible
attitude on the wooden seat which ran round the wall on three sides of
the room. At the far end, near the fire, a blind woman was knitting
men's stockings. Two very old women sat with their chins in their hands
and heads bent, motionless, neither hearing nor seeing anything outward.
Three others, their white pleated caps nodding at different angles, were
making aprons. A young woman with a healthy but sullen face was nursing
a large baby. Another, younger, but early-developed, as girls are in the
country, sat nearest the fire, a shawl half off her shoulders, her foot
rocking one of the cradles. There seemed no trace of coarseness in her
face, refined now by illness and days indoors; only an infinite
ignorance and bewilderment. She seemed not more than seventeen. The tone
of the Matron in speaking to her was not unkind, but had in it the
mixture of impatience and contempt, which sensible middle-aged women
have for foolish girls who can't look after themselves. There was, too,
unknown to herself, for she would have looked upon herself as a kind
woman, a slight feeling of satisfaction that, though the silly girl was
sheltered in this place and everyone was kind to her, she'd find out
what it meant to get herself in that state when she went outside. In the
meantime, being really kind, if sensible, she sai