ds at Hampstead, not far from you."

"For long?"

"I don't know. I should like to talk to you, if I could. Shall you be
driving back alone?"

"Yes. Will you come with me?"

"Thank you. Please let me know when you are going."

And Mrs. Travis turned away. In a few minutes Cecily went to take leave
of her aunt.

"How is Clarence?" asked Mrs. Lessingham.

"Still better, I believe. I left him to-night without uneasiness."

"Oh, I had a letter this morning from Mrs. Spence. No talk of England
yet. In the autumn they are going to Greece, then for the winter to
Sicily."

"Miriam with them?"

"As though it were a matter of course."

They both smiled. Then Cecily took leave of two or three other people,
and quitted the room. Mrs. Travis followed her, and in a few minutes
they were seated in the brougham.

Mrs. Travis had a face one could not regard without curiosity. It was
not beautiful in any ordinary sense, but strange and striking and rich
in suggestiveness. In the chance, flickering light that entered the
carriage, she looked haggard, and at all times her thinness and pallor
give her the appearance of suffering both in body and mind. Her
complexion was dark, her hair of a rich brown; she had very large eyes,
which generally wandered in an absent, restless, discontented way. If
she smiled, it was with a touch of bitterness, and her talk was wont to
be caustic. Cecily had only known her for a few weeks, and did not feel
much drawn to her, but she compassionated her for sorrows known and
suspected. Though only six and twenty, Mrs. Travis had been married
seven years, and had had two children; the first died at birth, the
second was carried off by diphtheria. Her husband Cecily had never
seen, but she heard disagreeable things of him, and Mrs. Travis herself
had dropped hints which signified domestic unhappiness.

After a minute or two of silence, Cecily was beginning to speak on some
indifferent subject, when her companion interrupted her.

"Will you let me tell you something about myself?"

"Whatever you wish, Mrs. Travis," Cecily answered, with sympathy.

"I've left my husband. Perhaps you thought of that?"

"No."

The sudden disclosure gave her a shock. She had the sensation of
standing for the first time face to face with one of the sterner
miseries of life.

"I did it once before," pursued the other, "two years ago. Then I was
foolish enough to be wheedled back again. That shan't happen this time.