r the
upper light and stretched threateningly across his whole horizon.

XXXI

THE celebrations at Westmore were over. Hanaford society, mustering for
the event, had streamed through the hospital, inspected the clinic,
complimented Amherst, recalled itself to Mr. Langhope and Mrs. Ansell,
and streamed out again to regain its carriages and motors.

The chief actors in the ceremony were also taking leave. Mr. Langhope,
somewhat pale and nervous after the ordeal, had been helped into the
Gaines landau with Mrs. Ansell and Cicely; Mrs. Amherst had accepted a
seat in the Dressel victoria; and Westy Gaines, with an _empressement_
slightly tinged by condescension, was in the act of placing his electric
phaeton at Miss Brent's disposal.

She stood in the pretty white porch of the hospital, looking out across
its squares of flower-edged turf at the long street of Westmore. In the
warm gold-powdered light of September the factory town still seemed a
blot on the face of nature; yet here and there, on all sides, Justine's
eye saw signs of humanizing change. The rough banks along the street had
been levelled and sodded; young maples, set in rows, already made a long
festoon of gold against the dingy house-fronts; and the houses
themselves--once so irreclaimably outlawed and degraded--showed, in
their white-curtained windows, their flowery white-railed yards, a
growing approach to civilized human dwellings.

Glancing the other way, one still met the grim pile of factories cutting
the sky with their harsh roof-lines and blackened chimneys; but here
also were signs of improvement. One of the mills had already been
enlarged, another was scaffolded for the same purpose, and young trees
and neatly-fenced turf replaced the surrounding desert of trampled
earth.

As Amherst came out of the hospital, he heard Miss Brent declining a
seat in Westy's phaeton.

"Thank you so much; but there's some one here I want to see first--one
of the operatives--and I can easily take a Hanaford car." She held out
her hand with the smile that ran like colour over her whole face; and
Westy, nettled by this unaccountable disregard of her privileges,
mounted his chariot alone.

As he glided mournfully away, Amherst turned to Justine. "You wanted to
see the Dillons?" he asked.

Their eyes met, and she smiled again. He had never seen her so
sunned-over, so luminous, since the distant November day when they had
picnicked with Cicely beside the sw