by her only possible train, he locked the door about
mid-day, and crossed the hollow field to the verge of the upland by
the Brown House, where he stood and looked over the vast prospect
northwards, and over the nearer landscape in which Alfredston stood.
Two miles behind it a jet of white steam was travelling from the left
to the right of the picture.

There was a long time to wait, even now, till he would know if she
had arrived. He did wait, however, and at last a small hired vehicle
pulled up at the bottom of the hill, and a person alighted, the
conveyance going back, while the passenger began ascending the
hill. He knew her; and she looked so slender to-day that it seemed
as if she might be crushed in the intensity of a too passionate
embrace--such as it was not for him to give. Two-thirds of the way
up her head suddenly took a solicitous poise, and he knew that she
had at that moment recognized him. Her face soon began a pensive
smile, which lasted till, having descended a little way, he met her.

"I thought," she began with nervous quickness, "that it would be
so sad to let you attend the funeral alone! And so--at the last
moment--I came."

"Dear faithful Sue!" murmured Jude.

With the elusiveness of her curious double nature, however, Sue did
not stand still for any further greeting, though it wanted some
time to the burial. A pathos so unusually compounded as that which
attached to this hour was unlikely to repeat itself for years, if
ever, and Jude would have paused, and meditated, and conversed. But
Sue either saw it not at all, or, seeing it more than he, would not
allow herself to feel it.

The sad and simple ceremony was soon over, their progress to the
church being almost at a trot, the bustling undertaker having a more
important funeral an hour later, three miles off. Drusilla was put
into the new ground, quite away from her ancestors. Sue and Jude
had gone side by side to the grave, and now sat down to tea in the
familiar house; their lives united at least in this last attention
to the dead.

"She was opposed to marriage, from first to last, you say?" murmured
Sue.

"Yes. Particularly for members of our family."

Her eyes met his, and remained on him awhile.

"We are rather a sad family, don't you think, Jude?"

"She said we made bad husbands and wives. Certainly we make unhappy
ones. At all events, I do, for one!"

Sue was silent. "Is it wrong, Jude," she said with a tentat