while Victoria renewed her
promises to the children.

There were two ways of going back to Fairview,--a long and a short way,
--and the long way led by Jabe Jenney's farm. Victoria came to the fork
in the road, paused,--and took the long way. Several times after this,
she pulled her horse down to a walk, and was apparently on the point of
turning around again: a disinterested observer in a farm wagon, whom she
passed, thought that she had missed her road. "The first house after you
turn off the hill road," Mrs. Fitch had said. She could still, of course,
keep on the hill road, but that would take her to Weymouth, and she would
never get home.

It is useless to go into the reasons for this act of Victoria's. She did
not know them herself. The nearer Victoria got to Mr. Jenney's, the more
she wished herself back at the forks. Suppose Mrs. Fitch told him of her
visit! Perhaps she could pass the Jenneys' unnoticed. The chances of
this, indeed, seemed highly favourable, and it was characteristic of her
sex that she began to pray fervently to this end. Then she turned off the
hill road, feeling as though she had but to look back to see the smoke of
the burning bridges.

Victoria remembered the farm now; for Mr. Jabe Jenney, being a person of
importance in the town of Leith, had a house commensurate with his
estate. The house was not large, but its dignity was akin to Mr. Jenney's
position: it was painted a spotless white, and not a shingle or a nail
was out of place. Before it stood the great trees planted by Mr. Jenney's
ancestors, which Victoria and other people had often paused on their
drives to admire, and on the hillside was a little, old-fashioned flower
garden; lilacs clustered about the small-paned windows, and a
bitter-sweet clung to the roof and pillars of the porch. These details of
the place (which she had never before known as Mr. Jenney's) flashed into
Victoria's mind before she caught sight of the great trees themselves
looming against the sombre blue-black of the sky: the wind, rising
fitfully, stirred the leaves with a sound like falling waters, and a
great drop fell upon her cheek. Victoria raised her eyes in alarm, and
across the open spaces, toward the hills which piled higher and higher
yet against the sky, was a white veil of rain. She touched with her whip
the shoulder of her horse, recalling a farm a quarter of a mile beyond
--she must not be caught here!

More drops followed, and the great trees