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Mrs. Hayward opened the folded paper, then gave a low cry, and looked at Janet once more—and to both the women there was a moment during which the solid earth, and this little prosaic spot on it, seemed to go round and round.

‘It will be what you was looking for?’ said Janet at last. She had been full of lamentation and resistance before. She felt nothing now except the hand of fate. The other shook her head.

‘Yes,’ she replied, and said no more.

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In the meantime Colonel Hayward was walking up and down the village street, waiting for his wife. He passed and repassed the door two or three times. He was very nervous, hanging about, not knowing what to make of himself. The church stood at the end of the street, and a path led down by the side of the churchyard, in the direction of Bellendean. As he came to the end of this, he stopped in the abstraction of his mind to look down the line of shade which a high hedgerow opposite to the low mossy wall of the churchyard threw half-way across the path. Some one was coming along in this clear and soft shadow, which was so grateful in the midst of the sunshine. It startled him to see it was Joyce, in her dark dress, her face relieved against the broad brim of an untrimmed straw hat, which added in its tone of creamy white additional force to the very delicate tints of her face, so clear in the shadowy air, with an impression of coolness in the midst of great warmth. He cast an anxious look of suspense over his shoulder towards the house where his wife was; but as he did not see her, nor any sign of her coming, he turned down the path to meet Joyce. It was rather by way of diverting his own anxiety than from any eagerness to address her. He seemed to want somebody to whom he could talk to relieve his own mind; for up to this moment, except from curiosity and anxiety in respect to the past, and a certain admiration of herself and her demeanour, it had not been Joyce, upon her own account, who had interested the Colonel. He had not had leisure as yet to get so far as her—for herself. He went on to talk to her because she was in it, concerned like himself, though she might not be aware of the fact, in the matter which his wife at present was engaged in clearing up. It was as if the scene then going on at the cottage was a consultation of doctors upon the life or death of a beloved patient. Those who are waiting breathless for the opinion, which is at the same time a sentence, are glad to get together to ask each other what they think,—at least, to stand together and wait, feeling the support of company. This was Colonel Hayward’s feeling. He went towards the girl with a sense that she had more to do with it than any one else—but not with any perception of its immense importance to her.