eyes met, "that you had better let
me dismiss the hands: they have only an hour at midday."

She signed her assent, and he turned to the operatives and said quietly:
"You have heard Mrs. Westmore's promise; now take yourselves off, and
give her a clear way to the stairs."

They dropped back, and Mr. Tredegar drew Bessy's arm through his; but as
he began to move away she turned and laid her hand on Mrs. Dillon's
shoulder.

"You must not stay here--you must go back to the children. I will make
it right with Mr. Truscomb," she said in a reassuring whisper; then,
through her tears, she smiled a farewell at the lingering knot of
operatives, and followed her companions to the door.

In silence they descended the many stairs and crossed the shabby
unfenced grass-plot between the mills and the manager's office. It was
not till they reached the carriage that Mrs. Westmore spoke.

"But Maria is waiting for us--we must call for her!" she said, rousing
herself; and as Amherst opened the carriage-door she added: "You will
show us the way? You will drive with us?"

During the drive Bessy remained silent, as if re-absorbed in the
distress of the scene she had just witnessed; and Amherst found himself
automatically answering Mr. Tredegar's questions, while his own mind
had no room for anything but the sense of her tremulous lips and of her
eyes enlarged by tears. He had been too much engrossed in the momentous
issues of her visit to the mills to remember that she had promised to
call at his mother's for Mrs. Ansell; but now that they were on their
way thither he found himself wishing that the visit might have been
avoided. He was too proud of his mother to feel any doubt of the
impression she would produce; but what would Mrs. Westmore think of
their way of living, of the cheap jauntiness of the cottage, and the
smell of cooking penetrating all its thin partitions? Duplain, too,
would be coming in for dinner; and Amherst, in spite of his liking for
the young overseer, became conscious of a rather overbearing freedom in
his manner, the kind of misplaced ease which the new-made American
affects as the readiest sign of equality. All these trifles, usually
non-existent or supremely indifferent to Amherst, now assumed a sudden
importance, behind which he detected the uneasy desire that Mrs.
Westmore should not regard him as less of her own class than his
connections and his bringing-up entitled him to be thought. In a flash
he saw w