"Just that you might be making a stop on your journey."

Oh, God Almighty! He gripped his head with his large hands and they trembled and the knuckles showed white through the skin.

"Well" --her voice had a careless, airy sound to it~"I thought you might just be calling in to say good-bye, seeing she's all set to move to her mansion."

Slowly he turned and looked at her, and she said mockingly, "Don't tell me this has come as a surprise to you. You know all her business;

surely she wouldn't keep you in the dark about this now, would she? "

His hands hung slack at his sides now and he waited, but she had to make a prelude as she always did before touching on the vital point.

"Byl the trouble one body can cause. And you wouldn't mind so much if it was somebody of importance, but when they're scum, well, you've got to ask yourself, haven't you?"

He had learned to still his tongue because he knew that if that was let loose his hands would become loose too, and once they touched her they wouldn't be able to stop. And of this he was afraid.

"Didn't you know there were great doings at the Hall yesterday? Myl they said never, even in the old man's time, the one afore the last one who begot half the countryside, never did he cause a scene like that of the young lord. Stopped them going off with the hairn, he did; caught them in the nick of time, kicked, lashed out, bashed, knocked everybody sprawling, then up with the hairn and takes him.... Now where do you think he takes him? Well, to his mother, of course. It's natural, isn't it, that he should take him to his mother?

But just until Tuesday. Well, that's what they say, just until Tuesday when her big house will be ready. In Newcastle it is, thirty rooms so they tell, Bowmer says, and a great stack of servants. Now it's like a fairy tale, isn't it, from rags to riches? And you know something else? He's leaving on Tuesday an' all. And where do you think he's going to live? I'll give you a guess. "

He was near the desk, where stood a big glass inkwell. From the corner of his eye he saw the light glinting on it.

He gripped his hands tightly together in front of him and looked down at them as he said, "Get out of me sight, do you hear! Get out of me sightl" Now the mockery went from her voice and she cried, "Out of your sightl You'd like me out of your sight altogether, wouldn't you? You're thinkin' of ways to get rid of me all the time, aren't you? Oh, you needn't tell me, I can see your mind working every minute of the day.

But you can take it from me I'll be here when you're gone. Get that into your head, when you're pushing the daisies up I'll be here, an' I'll be ruling as is me right. " Then pulling her lips tightly in between her teeth, she bit on them before saying, " God, why did I let mese lt in for you? " And he, unable to curb his tongue any longer, cried at her, " For the simple reason I was the only one in straits dire enough to take you. "

On this her rough skin took on a bluish tinge, her small eyes became round dots of dark light; and as her hand whipped out in the direction of a brass vase used for holding pipe spills, he shouted, "You throw that an' I promise you it'll be the last thing you'll ever throw."

e

Such was his tone, such was the look on his face that her hand became still on the rim of the vase, and he went past her and out of the room and up the stairs, and, tearing off his breeches and coat, he changed his clothes. Then taking a chamois leather purse from a drawer, he picked up his tall hat and went out and down the stairs and through the kitchen, which was empty now; and William was standing in the yard with the cart and horse ready. He paused for a moment before mounting the cart; then, looking at William, he said under his breath, "Have you had any word from Cissie?"

"You mean the day, Matthew?"

"Aye."

"No, Matthew. Is anything the matter? Is she all right? She was all right Sunday."

"Yes, yes, she's all right." He nodded at the boy.

"I ... I just wondered." He mounted the box thinking, It could all be a story. She would never make any move without letting the lads know, and if she was going to be in so much clover it was ten to one she would take them with her. Still, on the other hand, she hadn't had much time had she, if this upset only happened yesterday? But he never thought she'd do it, and she wouldn't have done it if it wasn't for the hairn. Damn the hairn!

He shortened his route, although he knew he stood the chance of being bogged down. Taking the road to Rosier's mine, he forked right, then cut over the rough pot-holed track that led to the open fells which would bring him down to the road that skirted the boundary wall of the Hall.

It was just before he reached the road that he saw a man running hell for leather across the open tells. One minute he'd be in a hollow and the next minute on a hump, then he would jump a gully here and there.

The figure was too distant for him to recognize but he thought the man was a poacher and the beaters after him. There was a shoot going on some 1

where roundabout. But then no man would be so foolhardy as to poach in the middle of a shoot, unless he wanted his brains blown out.

As the cart continued to move forward the man was lost to his view. He rounded the bend and another hundred yards or so farther on he stopped, and, quickly jumping down from the cart, mounted the slope.

One second he was hurrying forward, the next he was frozen to the spot, his eyes looking at something his brain for the moment denied seeing. Before him were three people, two of them spaced within a distance of fifty feet of each other; these were Cissie and a woman with a gun. Cissie was standing with her back tight against the corner wall of the dwelling; and lying breast pressed against a hump, a gun to her shoulder, her eye on its sights, was a strange woman; the third figure was the man who had been running, and him he recognized now as young Fischel. He, too, had a gun and he was standing dead still on a hillock some distance away. His gun was half cocked, but it was his voice he used, and he was calling now, desperately, "Isabellel Isabellel Listen to me. Don't l Don't l" Matthew saw the woman's head turn slightly to the side; then once again her eyes were concentrating down the length of the gun, and when she fired it there came the sound of a double report.

As he saw Cissie slide down the wall he heard himself screaming, "Christ! Christ!" And then he was kneeling beside her, holding her to him, crying, "Cissie! Aw, Cissie!"

Her eyes were open and she was breathing deeply, and she pushed him away with her hand as it to get air, and he gasped at her, "Where?

Where you hurt? "

In answer she made one small movement with her head, and then with one hand she began tentatively to feel her chest and shoulder; following this, her fingers moved to her cheek from where the blood was running and in which was embedded a sliver of stone.

He pulled her hand away and examined her face;

then gasped again, "You all right? You all right?" And she moved her head once more; and as he lifted her up on to her feet and she leaned against the wall she slewed her gaze to the side and there, about six inches away, was the place where the bullet had struck and slivered the sandstone. Matthew's gaze followed hers and he exclaimed in awe, "My God!" Then he turned about and screwed his eyes up to bring into focus the man and woman on the mound. And again he said, "My Godt" for the woman he saw now was hanging over the mound, her arms stretched downwards, her head at a queer angle, and the man was kneeling beside her with the gun still in his hands.

Cissie, too, was looking at the figures on the mound and she groaned, "Oh nol No. Oh, dear, dear Godi Oh nol" Sarah and Charlotte came running from the house at this moment, crying, "Our Cissiel Our Cissie!" And Matthew turned on them and yelled, "Get back in there! Do you hear? Get back in there and don't come out until I tell you." They backed from him and fled inside and he rushed after them and put his hand round the door and took out the key and locked it from the outside. Then running back to Cissie, where she was moving slowly now across the open ground like a sleepwalker, he said, "Stay where you are a minute. Stay where you are." Then he pushed her back towards the wall and he himself went forward towards the mound.

He gazed down at the girl with the hole in her neck from which the blood was pouring and soaking her fine clothes, then he looked at the young man who, up to that moment, he had hated as only a man can hate another who had taken the virginity which he thought of as his own right and who was now aiming to follow up his raping in a more legalized way. He saw that he was trying to speak but couldn't. When he swayed and put one hand to his head Matthew thrust out his arm and steadied him, then watched the young fellow's head droop forward and his face screw up into agonized contortions before he put his hand across his mouth as if he were going to be sick.

"Come on. Come away." When Matthew went to turn him round, Clive shook him off. Blinking rapidly and with the muscles of his face straightening, he quickly knelt down and, gently turning his sister over, put his hand inside her habit. She felt warm, but there was no movement.

Now Matthew, kneeling beside him, pulled off the white muffler from under his cape, and, lifting the lolling head, wound it gently but firmly around the red-stained neck. And as he did so the strong smell of brandy was whiffed up to him and he, too, felt sick as his fingers came in contact with the warm, sticky blood. He said now quietly, "There's a door down below. I'll bring it up." He rose from his knees and hurried down the slope to where Cissie was standing supporting herself against the wall once more, her eyes staring from her head. He put his hand on her and said, softly, "Go inside; you're shivering. Go on, you can do no good out here." But she made no response until he said, "I'm going to take the old door." Then she followed him slowly into the wood house.

When he had picked up the door and gone out, she automatically, but still moving like someone in a dream, began to dear aside the wood that the children had been chopping earlier. Then she moved the chopping block into the corner; which done, she stood waiting for their arrival.

When they brought her in she had to grip tightly on the edge of the sawing cradle to steady herself. She stared at the dead-white face, the blood-soaked wrapping around the neck, the green velvet habit, the brown leather riding boots, the pointed toes sticking directly upwards.

The door lowered, they all stood still like hypnotized beings in a deep, heavy silence until it was broken by a child's cry coming through the wall; and dive's head turned in its direction. Then he groaned aloud.

"Sit yourself down." Matthew took his arm again and led him to the chopping block.

Clive sat on it and dropped his head into his hands, and after a moment, during which Matthew and Cissie looked down at him, he heaved a deep sigh. Then, straightening his back, he said haltingly, | "Her her horse, it's tethered on the hillside; I'll ... I'll ride to the Hall."

Matthew gathered his lower lip into his mouth and gnawed at it before he said, "Take your time ... Sir ... and ... and whatever comes of it I'll... I'll be a witness. You had to do it."

Clive looked at the the miller. He had said he had to do it. But did he? Did he have to do it? Yes; far better him than anyone else, for if she had killed this girl she would have died anyway. When all the facts of the case were brought to the fore, the jury wasn't assembled which would dare have let her off, well born though she was. She seemed due to die in any case, and now he was going to follow her.

They might not hang him but they would make him pay the penalty in some way, for wasn't this last act the result of his raping a young girl? And there were many puritans in law now who felt it their duty to make examples of rakes. Why? Why did he ever come back? Why hadn't he gone on sailing the seas? If only, in this moment, he could find himself on a heaving deck in the middle of the ocean . "What did you say?"

"I was saying. Sir, to wait a while." Matthew did not now find it difficult to address this man as "Sir" -his hate of him had vanished.

The dead one lying there had, he felt, created a barrier between the young fellow and Cissie that was impregnable. He went on, "Cissie's gone to make a strong cup of tea.

And, Sir, I've . I've been thinking. There could be a way out of this. "

Clive looked towards the figure lying on the door. It was covered up now with a black cloak. He hadn't noticed the miller doing that, he hadn't noticed the girl going out. He asked now, "What time is it?"

"Getting on for two. Sir."

Getting on for two. It was just over an hour since he had come out of the wood on Thornton's farm. The shooting had been spasmodic because of the light. He had left the main group and made his way back through Thornton's and was in sight of the North Lodge when he saw her come out of the gate, turn immediately right, and gallop down the road. He hadn't called to her--it would have been fruitless-and he hadn't to think twice of her destination. He had leaped forward as if he had been released from a spring; and he had taken to the open fell land without any hope of cutting her off, because that was impossible the way she was riding, but praying, as he ran, that he'd be in time to stop her doing anything mad. And in a way his prayers had been answered. He had no thought to kill her. No! Nol Not that; he had aimed at her shoulder, but that slight turning of her head when he had called to her had deflected his own aim and consequently hers.

"Look. Look." Matthew was talking as he might have done to Jimmy.

"Pay attention to me for a minute. As I said, I've been thinkin'. It was all an accident. If you hadn't stopped her she would have done for Cissie. You must look at it like that." Matthew paused; the young fellow wasn't really with him, he wasn't listening, he was dazed. He said now, his voice louder, "Were you out shooting. Sir?"

"Yes, yes; I was out shooting." He spoke as if he were repeating a phrase he had learned by heart.

"Well then, look. She ... she was likely out shoot- in' an' all. That could be so, couldn't it?"

"Yes, yes, that could be so." Clive moved his head once.

"Well now, in a short time it'll... it'll be dark. By the way. Sir, where was the shoot?"

"Over Thornton's land towards Willey's, the west side of the estate."

His tone was weary and held a slight impatience.

"The west side?" Matthew nodded his head in a series of small movements, then went on, "They'll have been shootin' around there all day, and accidents can happen in shoots." He now bent down and stared into dive's face and muttered below his breath, "You get what I'm driving at. Sir? If she was to be found around there it could be an accident; it's happened afore, like the one at the Gallow's Dip."

"The what?"

"The Gallow's Dip. You wouldn't know it by that name. It's a piece of land; it's actually in one of Thornton's fields. There's a hump in the ground, it runs along like a ridge. If you're a tallish fellow and walking in the hollow your head appears to anyone || on the other side as if it were bobbing along the ground. That's what they said, at the inquiry when the keeper shot a poacher; the keeper said that the head was bobbing along the ground. It was bad light and he took it for a rabbit. An' he got off. It must have happened in your great-grandfather's time. But do you get what I'm aiming at? Accidents happen at shoots, keepers take pot-shots at shadows; every movement from dusk on is a poacher to a keeper. If she could be found round there ... well, like I said, it would be taken for an accident, because after all that's how it was, you never aimed to kill her, did you?"

Clive didn't answer but he swallowed hard at the saliva sticking in his throat. He wasn't really listening to all the miller was saying, for the longing was strong in him again to be on the sea, miles and miles away from all this. What about the child and her,

and the house he was going to visit between voyages? The thought came to him as he saw her coming through the door, a mug of steaming liquid in each hand; and when she offered him one of the mugs he took it from her and for the first time on this day he looked into her face; and he saw the cut on her cheek and the dried blood where the bullet had grazed it, and he thought. My God! as near as that, and for a fleeting moment he was glad he had done what he had done, for Isabelle had set out deliberately to murder this girl.

He sipped slowly at the tea. It was bitter, and distasteful, very much like the stuff they brewed in the galley; but he drank it as he had for four years. There came another blank in his thinking when he was unaware of the movements about him and he was brought back to the present by the sound of low sobbing and he became aware that she was crying and that the miller was holding her in his arms and stroking her hair gently, and she was resting against him as if it were her natural place. The sight made him sad, deeply sad, and he wanted to get up and go out; but he sat on looking at them and listening to the miller talking.

"Go on in," he was saying, "and stay in. Now listen to me. Stay in and try to make yourself forget everything that's happened. Tell the girls that an' all.... Anyway, they didn't see anything. They didn't get round the corner, they could have only heard the narration. Go on now.

And if I can't get over the night I'll be here some time the morrow.

And no matter who comes you know nothing. Mind that now, you know nothing. An' you got that. " He touched the dried blood on her face gently with his forefinger.

"You got that from a sliver of wood, remember."

Cissie turned from him and looked towards Clive. He had saved her life and he had put his own in peril. She wanted to run to him and clasp his hands and . and bring comfort to him in some way, for his eyes looked so deeply, deeply sad, he looked entirely lost. He wasn't the young, slim, commanding figure of the man who had brought the child to her yesterday. When his gaze dropped from hers she turned away and went out slowly.

And now Matthew stood looking down at the shape of the figure lying under his cloak and his mind was working at a rate it had never reached before in his life. He knew that the plan he was hatching in his mind wasn't purely altruistic, though at the moment he was both grateful to and sorry for the fellow sitting there. It was of Cissie he was thinking; and, through her, of himself. If this fellow here was brought up for the killing of his sister the sympathy of the people would not go to him, or the girl he had saved, but would be lavished on the dead, and no matter what sentence they passed on him, short of hanging him, it would be light in comparison with the sentence that would fall on a girl who lived rough on the fells, who'd had a child to the accused man and who, they would say, had sold the child to its grandfather; then when the father appeared again egged him on to have the child returned to her. Oh, he knew the pattern it would take. He had in his time been in the Shields Court and the Durham Assizes and listened to cases and marveled at the twisting of the law men. But it wasn't the condemnation of the law men he feared most for Cissie but that of her own kind. They would hound her from the villages and the hamlets around here; and, moreover, they would drag himself into it and name him as one of her men. He could stand that, for he was so named already, but it would only go to blacken her. She'd had enough;

for years now she'd been hounded in one way or another and this would be the last straw.

As Clive rose to his feet Matthew turned sharply towards him and, standing before him, he said low, "This what I'm thinking of doing.

I've got it all fixed in me mind. Now listen to me. " He was speaking again as he would to one of his own kind.

"As soon as it's dark enough I'll carry her down to me cart. I'll tie the horse to the back, an' take the road by which I came, an' when I get to the fork I'll make a wide detour circling the North Lodge, and I'll come out by Fell Gap, then make my way down the track by Gallow's Dip, Then I'll pick a spot along there where I'll say I found her. I'll leave a bit evidence of some sort so that I'll be able to take them back and show them the place. And I'll do it properly, I'll ... I'll rough up the ground a bit...."

"No, no!" Clive, seeming to throw off his stupor, thrust him aside.

"Don't be absurd. I couldn't allow this. No, no; you could be caught before you got there. Do you realize that?"

"What would that signify? As long as she's away from here I could even say I found her on the road below, or any other place; but there'll be fewer questions if she's found on the place where the shoot was the day. Look, Sir; all I ask is that you go now, for the sooner you're in the house the better. Go in as if you'd just..."

"No." Clive's voice was calm and firm now.

"It's very good of you, miller, but I can't accept such an offer. It's impossible."

Matthew stepped back from him and let out a long oath finishing with, "Christ's blood! What's the good of another of you dying? Cissie's now got one on her mind but if she should have you an' all, even if you were just put along the line, it will drive her insane. And then there's the child. Have you given him a thought? When the tale comes to him when he's older there won't be a word of truth left in it.... It's all senseless."

Yes, the miller was right, it was all senseless. He was a cute fellow, this miller. Perhaps he had been a poacher in his day; he was reasoning like a desperate man. Yet it was himself who was the desperate man, e and he couldn't think at all. What was the plan he had suggested? She was out shooting . ?

It was a full five minutes later when, still listening to Matthew, he said thickly, "If you are bent on doing this for me then I must go with you in case you meet someone before you reach the ... the allotted place."

"No, no. Sir." Matthew shook his head vigorously.

"Yes!" The word was almost rapped out and it conveyed to Matthew that the young fellow was once more in command of himself; so he said, "Well, Sir, have it your own way for the time being, but stay where you are for the minute, and I'll get the horse an' bring it here in case he should be spotted. There's plenty of room; this is where I stable mine."

There was a moment's pause as they looked at each other. Then Matthew went hurriedly out and Clive turned his back on the black-covered figure on the door and stood staring into the deep gathering twilight.

Within five minutes Matthew came back leading the horse, and the animal snorted and reared until Clive went to its head and spoke softly to it. But it remained uneasy and trembling, conscious, as animals are, of death.

Twice during the next hour as he alternately sat and stared at the figure on the door, while sorrow cut at him like a knife, then walked the narrow space of the floor, he burst out, saying, "Look. It's very generous but ... but I can't go through with it, not this way." And Matthew said simply, "Wait, just hang on. Once it's dark it'll be all right. I'm telling you. Sir, it'll be all right."

When the light had almost gone Matthew went and stood at the far end of the door and looked towards Clive, who, he saw, had to make a great effort before he could walk the three steps forward and pick up the other end.

Five minutes later the body was on the cart, the cloak over it, and the horse tethered by a long rope to the back. Then Matthew said, "Get up. Sir, an' I'll lead him." And he went to the horse's head and they started.

He had not lit his lamps and he knew that it would be very unfortunate and put a spoke in the whole business if he were to meet anything on the road before he could get on to the fell track, but he had to take that chance.

The chance came off and sometime later, as he heard a church clock in the distance striking five, he stopped the horse and lit the lamps. By half-past five they had skirted the North Lodge and come within half a mile of the Thornton land; and before he turned off the narrow track that would lead to the road running by the west wall he stopped the cart and said, "Now, Sir, I'm all right; I'm going to drop you off just afore we reach the road, an' it you keep right you'll come to the Lodge within fifteen minutes." He paused, and they stared at each other through the dim reflection of the lamps. Then Matthew, speaking as man to man, said, "So far, so good. You've got nothin' to worry about; the only thing to do is to keep your mouth shut. What's done's done;

nothing you can say can undo it. Think of it that way. And think an' all, what good is it going to do you or anybody else stuck in gaol for years? It's likely to kill your father an' all. "

It was strange, but in all this he had never thought once of his father--and here was the miller saying it was likely to kill him. And that was true. His daughter murdered and his son hanged, or, as the miller had just said, rotting in prison, and his grandchild taken from him. Christ alive! What had he done? If he had only left things as they were, left the child where he was, not played the Don Quixote, all this would never have happened. But then it had happened, and the reason for its happening he could trace back to his own anger and hate towards his father, for he had wanted to hurt him, have his revenge on him for those years of squalid slavery and degradation. Yet within the past two hours he had not given him a thought. But this he knew now: the miller was right, this tragedy would kill his father;

fast or slow it would kill him, and strangely now he did not want him to be hurt further.

When he held out his hand and said, slowly, "What can I say to you?"

Matthew took it and they gripped hard, and when he didn't speak Clive asked, "Why are you doing this? Why were you prepared to take this risk?" And Matthew, as always, coming straight to the point, answered, "For a number of reasons. Sir. But if I was to tell the truth, the main one is Cissie. If this came out, if it was told as it happened, her life would be hell, because the truth is, no matter what they did to you they would do twice as much to her, with or without law.

Ignorant people act ignorantly, Sir. I don't want her to be hurt no more. " Nor to be driven to some far place where he wouldn't be able to see her.

There was a long pause before Clive said, "Nor me. Thank you. Thank you. By the way what is your name?"

"Matthew Turnbull."

"Thank you, Matthew."

"You're welcome, Sir. Good-bye and good luck."

Good luck? He'd certainly need that from now on.

As he moved away in the darkness he heard the miller click his tongue at the horse and the cart joggle forward; and he could see the figure lying prone in the back as if illuminated, and he groaned out, "Oh Isabelle, Isabelle."

When he rang the bell at the North Lodge the lodge keeper came running out, holding his lamp high, and on seeing who it was, he exclaimed, "Oh, Sir. I didn't know you were still out, thought perhaps you might've come back tother gate. His Lordship's in this half-hour or more."

"Got ... got stuck in the mire, Beecham." He pointed down to his mud-covered boots and breeches, the result of his stumbling into a ditch farther back along the road.

"Lord! Sir, you are in a mess. And you're just in time; 'tis spittin' on an' could turn to sleet. It's a bitter night and black as the ace of spades; would you like a lantern, Sir? Take this one."

"Thank you, Beecham. Goodnight."

"Good-night to you. Sir."

When he left the lodge keeper he let out a long shuddering breath; it was as if he had got over his first obstacle. Anyway, he had talked, he had talked naturally, but how would he talk when the miller brought the cart to the door? But he wouldn't be there, he'd be in his bath.

He'd take a long, slow bath and he'd fill up with whiskey inside. But not too much, just enough to get him over the night Godi He stopped on the path and gripped his face with his hand. How had this all come about? He had killed his sister, he who had no real love for gun sport had shot a human being. He who, as a boy, had squirmed when he shot his first rabbit. Rabbiti It had all started with a rabbit, and just about there. Somewhere in that tangle was the spy-hole where she'd lain and watched the child. And one day he'd lain with her. Oh Cecilial . Oh Isabellel One as dead as the other to him now.

For six days the child had whined, cried, and sulked, and Cissie was desperate to know how to bring him round. He wanted his nanny, he wanted his grandpa e pa, he wanted his Aunt Isabelle, he wanted his bath, he wanted his walkie; he didn't like that porridge, he didn't like that broth, he didn't like that bed, and most of all he didn't like the lady picking him up;

and he slapped at her whenever she attempted to do so.

He wasn't crying this morning but he was sitting close to the ere, and when she said to him, "Come and see the snow, Richard. Come and look out of the window and see the snow," he shook his head, then said in a whimpering voice, "I'm cold."

She didn't think he could be cold; he was well wrapped up and the room was warm. She had kept the fire going full blast night and day.

Charlotte came to her and whispered, "Will we take him out to play snowballs?" And she replied dully, "No; he might catch cold."

She said to Annie and Nellie, who were sitting on the mat looking at a little colored picture book she had bought them the Christmas before, "Let Richard have a look" ; then, turning to Sarah who was washing up the breakfast crockery in a bowl that was standing on top of a box in a corner of the room, she added, "Leave those, Sarah, and read the story to Richard." And Sarah dutifully left what she was doing and dried her hands; and kneeling on the mat between her sisters and the small boy, she smiled her quiet smile and, taking the book from Annie, began in a slow syllable-spaced way to read, "Ma-ryputasaucerofmilkonthematforthepussycat-and the-pussy-cat-lapped-all-the-milk-up-then-Mary .."

Sarah got no further, for the tattered-edged book was slapped out of her hand; and Richard, standing up and stamping his toot and with tears bursting from his eyes, cried, "Don't want to hear about the pussy cat. Don't want to hear about the pussy cat. I want my grand papa and Aunt Isabelle. I want to go home. I want nanny and have my bath."

Cissie bowed her head and dosed her eyes, then turned away and, pulling the old black shawl from the back of the door, she went out. Keeping her head down against the snow she hugged the wall until she reached the wood house. Then she stumbled towards the chopping block and, sitting down, buried her face in her hands and began to cry. What was she going to do? What was going to happen? One thing was certain. She couldn't keep the child fastened up here. But even if they went to live in this other house, would he ever get to like her? That was the unbearable part of this business: the child didn't like her. Her own family, each and every one of the nine of them, loved her; but her own child, whom she not only loved but had adored blindly for years, he couldn't bear her touch, he struggled in her arms, he slapped at her. He was but a child of three and a halt years but he acted more like Charlotte and Sarah in age; and each day did not dim his memory of what he had left, only seemed to put a keener edge on it.

By the previous arrangement she should have moved to the new house the day before. Not that she now wanted to go. She didn't really know what she wanted at the moment, for she was feeling odd. Perhaps, as she put it, she still had the shock on her. But she would be forced to go if she was to keep the child. And that was the question written large across the front of her mind. Was she going to keep him? Would he like her any better among nice furniture and warm surroundings? It wasn't furniture he was crying after, but people, his people, his nanny, his grandfather. and her.

She sat up and clasped her hands tightly between her knees and stared at the logs and branches of wood arrayed neatly against the wall opposite her. Matthew had come in yesterday, after the inquest.

Everything had gone just as he had foretold.

"Death by misadventure" was the coroner's verdict. One good thing, Matthew said, was that they weren't going to go searching for a scapegoat in the form of a poacher.

The fault lay with one of the thirty-five people who were at the shoot. These included His Lordship, his guests. Farmer Thomton and his son, the bailiff, and the keepers. It had been admitted that all of them had passed within range of the spot where the body was found sometime during the afternoon. Matthew said the coroner had asked him one telling question. Did he possess a gun? And he was thankful he could answer it truthfully. No; nor had he ever handled one in his life. He wouldn't know how.

Following the inquest, Matthew said His Lordship had sought him out and thanked him kindly for all he had done. But Mr. Clive hadn't spoken to him;

they had just exchanged glances. And Matthew had ended, he looked like death. He had then said to her, "Have you heard from him?" And when she shook her head he said, "Are you going to his house?" And she had looked at him piteously before answering, "It I want to keep the child what else can I do?" And on this he had stared at her hard before turning away and leaving her without a further word.

She rose to her feet and, gathering up a pile of wood, she went out and was making her way back to the house when a figure loomed out of the snow gloom and came to the door just as she reached it. And she recognized the figure as the servant who had come with the child. He handed her a package, saying, "This is from Master Clive." His voice was stiff, his look accusing, and when she said "Thanks," he merely nodded once and turned quickly away.

When she went into the room she saw that the girls were sitting on the mat together at one side of the fireplace and the child was huddled up on a crack et at the other. She sighed deeply as she sat down at the corner of the table farthest away from them. She opened the big envelope and looked at the papers inside, then called Sarah to her and said, "Do you think you can read these?"

Sarah and the others went to Sunday school every week. Parson Hedley took them for an hour and taught them their letters. She would have liked to go with them but she was too ashamed to ask; but on the quiet she had said to Sarah, "Do you think you could learn me, Sarah? I'd like to be able to write me name." So now she knew the alphabet and could form a few one-syllable words, but she knew no big words.

Sarah picked up the single sheet first and stared at it, then looked at Cissie and said, "It says. Dear ..." Then she stopped, and again looking at Cissie, she said, "

"Tisn't your name." And Cissie looked down at the paper and although she had never seen her name in writing she recognized it and said, "

"Tis. It's me proper name, Cecilia."

Sarah gave a small laugh, then began again, "Dear Ce-cilia, The carriage-willcallforyouto-to-morrow- morning.

The-houseisreadyandIhopeyouwill-be happy-there.

I-willnotseeyouagainasIamdue-to sail-to-morrow. Go-to-the-lawyer whose-ad-addressyouwillfindontheen-dosed. " Here Sarah paused and slowly spelled out the word " document," and although she mispronounced it Cissie knew what it meant. And she said softly, " Go on. " And Sarah finished, " He-willhelpandadvise-you.

All-thatreremainsformeto-sayisthatIprayyouwillforgetthepastallofitand-t atyouwillcometolookuponme-kindly.

I-re-main-your- servant, CliveFischel. "

Sarah now looked at Cissie. She had her head bent deeply on her chest, and after a moment she said, "Shall I read these, our Cissie? And Cissie nodded and Sarah opened the first of the two folded parchment sheets, and after her eyes had scanned the small neat handwriting she said, " I couldn't do this," and Cissie took it from her hand and looked at it. Then she opened the other sheet and looked at that. This was a double sheet and it was covered all over with small writing, and had a red seal at the bottom. After a moment she folded it up again and said, " It'll be about the house. "

"Are we goin', Cissie?" Sarah's voice was an excited whisper; and Cissie turned and looked towards the boy still sitting silently on the crack et his face white, his eyes wide, his small baby mouth on the verge of a tremble all the while, and she shook her head and said, "I don't know, I don't know."

She gathered the papers up now and took them to the chest and placed them in the top drawer. Then, picking up her old black shawl again, she put it over her head and tied the string around her neck, and over this she put the fawn one. Then she took the two milk cans from the box and went to the door, saying, "I'll be as quick as I can. Keep the door barred till I come back."

When she was outside, her body bent against the blizzard, she wondered why she had bothered to tell them to bolt the door for she had no fear now of their coming to take the child from her. And the scrapers didn't come in the winter, not to this godforsaken part anyway. More and more now she was looking upon the place as god-forsaken; and if she didn't leave tomorrow, what then? If she carried out the distant thought hovering in her head, what then? Winter on top of winter up here until she was old? For she wouldn't take a house from Matthew, not as long as he had a wife. So, should she follow the trend of her mind as it was at this moment, it would be the finish of any idea of a real home and comfort, and a different life for the girls; on the other hand if she put her foot down, asserted her right and fought him, she'd be set for life. It was odd to think of her, a grown woman now, fighting a child, and her own flesh into the bargain.

Written on those papers she had pushed into the drawer was her right to hundreds of pounds, and that to come to her every year. One thousand pounds he had said. She couldn't visualize this amount, she could only break it up into countless sovereigns, and the sovereigns into shillings, and she knew there was enough of them to last her a number of lifetimes. But she would have to get the better of the child first.

The snow had eased off, and there wasn't much on the ground as yet, only a thin powder that the wind whipped up into dusty clouds; and when she looked across the open land 'she saw the clouds skipping over hillocks and dropping into hollows, somersaulting into tight corkscrews, then disappearing as if wiped away by a magic hand.

The last few days, when going for the milk, she had taken a different route, so that on no part of her journey would she see the boundary of the Hall. She was crossing a wide stretch of open land, flat here, to where it joined the road, and she had only to cross this and she was in the lower field of Thomton's farm.

The field was edged with a dry stone wall. It was easy to climb, being only about four feet in height. She had the knack of pulling herself up backwards on to its broad top and swinging her legs across; the short cut saved her a good ten minutes' walk. About fifty feet away to the right of her the road turned sharply and ran through a copse; and as she was about to cross to the wall there appeared from the dark tunnel of trees darker moving objects. They were standing out in dense blackness against the white drift-covered ground, and as she stared at the oncoming cavalcade she knew a moment of panic bordering on hysteria and she almost cried aloud, "I thought it was over." When the servant had brought the letter from him this morning she thought it was because everything was finished and he was about to go. But now here was the funeral advancing on her and she couldn't move. The black-plumed horses with their black-clad riders, streamers Hying from their high hats, seemed like figures coming at her out of hell.

When she hit the wall on the opposite side the cans clattered to the ground and the sound echoed above the horses' hooves and the grinding of the wheels on the rough road. Slowly she turned her body round and pressed her back tight against the wall, willing herself to keep still, willing herself not to cry out in fear. She was dead, dead; she was going to her burial; she could do her no more harm, yet here she was coming towards her.

She would yell. She would scream. She couldn't stop herself.

The horses were bobbing their heads, making their plumes dance, but the men on their backs were stiff, straight, and they, too, looked dead. There were six of them. Two passed her, then another two, then another two; and then there was the hearse. It was all glass, and in it the coffin lay, and she could see inside the coffin, she could see the girl. Her head was turned towards her and there was a great hole in her neck.

She opened her mouth wide but the icy air rushed into it and down into her lungs and she gasped. And now there was the first coach passing her. It had great black bows of ribbons tied to the corners, and there were two people inside. Their faces stood out from their black clothes whiter than the snow, one was the lord and the other was. Even in this moment she couldn't let herself whisper his name, she could only think he was riding with his back to her. He shouldn't be riding with his back to her.

Then came another carriage. There were two people in this, but they were fadng forward. And then another carriage; and then another; an endless row of carriages all with black bows and streamers floating from them.

Following on foot now came the long line of menservants, headed by the bailiff, and the butler, and behind them the farmers, and the tenants.

All men. And whereas no face had turned towards her out of the carriages, now every eye that passed her was slanted in her direction, all judging her, all condemning her. Had she not taken the young master away from the Hall and broken the young mistress's heart and brought His Lordship into old age? Even to the lowest of them their eyes condemned.

The haughtiness, the slights, the manner of the dead one that had not only kept them in their place but labeled them for what they were--menials--was forgotten for the moment, for the dead could do no wrong. But someone must be condemned. There were still the living; and there she was standing against the wall, brazen. If she got her just deserts she should be hounded. But she was being given a mansion, so it was said, and a small fortune was being made over to her. Who said the wicked shall not prosper?

She was still pinned against the wall when the last figure in the long black procession faded into the distance; and then she gave in to the overpowering feeling and slid down into a blackness all her own.

Minutes later she came out of the faint, and when she raised her head the world swung about her and she vomited.

When she dragged herself to her feet she remembered to collect the cans, but now she didn't go over the wall; instead, she staggered like someone drunk across the road and made her way back to the habitation.

She felt ill, so very ill.

II

The following morning she rose in the dark and attended to the fire.

She still felt ill, and would have liked to stay in bed with a hot brick at her feet for she was cold and shivering. Deep inside of her was a feeling that she'd never be warm again. To try to soothe this feeling she made and ate some hot gruel, but it didn't help.

Before she called the children she took from the middle drawer of the chest her son's clothes and slowly she laid them one by one on top of the others in the trunk, leaving out only those things he would need to put on. Then she locked the trunk and brought from the cave itself the two valises and stood them by the side of the door. Then she washed herself, combed her hair, put on her only other clean skirt, also a matching clean shirtwaist. This done, she woke Sarah and Charlotte and whispered to them to bring their clothes into the room and get dressed.

Sleepy-eyed, they obeyed her; but when Charlotte caught sight of the cases standing near the door the sleep fled from her and she whispered excitedly, "Are we going, Cissie? Are we going to that house?" and Cissie, walking to the shelf and taking down the wooden bowls, placed them in a row on the table before she said, "No. No, Charlotte; we're not going to the house." In the silence she peered at the two girls through the candlelight. Both their faces looked small and pinched, and she thought. There's still time; I could make a stand.

Turning from them she went into the cave and woke the other two, putting her fingers to her lips to ensure their silence, so that they wouldn't wake the child. When they had risen she lit the candle that was standing on a box near her bed. She'd had to keep the candles going for hours the first three nights because he was terrified of the darkness of the cave, tor his darkness had been but a twilight of night lights. And now, going down on her hunkers, she held the candle half over the bed, for he was lying on the far side close against the wall. At first he had resisted her lying with him, and when she would wait until he had fallen asleep and he would wake up and find her there, he would toss himself as far from her as he possibly could--and he still did.

She gazed down at him. His face was pink and warm looking; his brown curls were hanging over his brow and spread like a halo on the pillow round his head. His mouth was not forming a baby button, but looked tight and firm as if in his sleep he were still resisting her.

The pain was grinding deep into her bowels. She thought she could die of it and she wished at this minute she could die, just suddenly go out like she had done the day before, but finally. She was past thinking of the others. All her life she'd had to think of their wants, their needs. Now there was her own need. She needed this child as she would never need anything again in her life. But he didn't need her. He could not remember that she had carried him in her womb, nor that he had suckled at her breast. He had no memory of the anguish of his conception in this very place; he only remembered the environment that had surrounded him during his awakening to life and the people that made that environment possible.

With one finger she softly stroked the clenched fist that was lying on top of the quilt, and even that light movement made him withdraw his hand and tuck it into his neck. On this she closed her eyes, then slowly straightened up, left the candle burning, and went into the other room. There she saw them waiting for her, all looking at her, not accusingly, just mystified, unable to understand why their Cissie wouldn't move from here when she had the chance of a nice house.

At half-past ten, when Bowmer knocked on the door, she and the child were ready. The coachman's face was unsmiling. If you wanted his opinion he would have said that this whole business was wrong, crazy.

But there; there was no accounting for the ways of gentry. Gaol you, put you to the lash, stick you in the pillory, deport you, even hang you for a trifle, then turn a complete somersault and give their own away and set up a fell squatter in a fine establishment. It didn't make sense.

When she said, "Are you on your own?" he answered curtly, "No, I've a lad with me. We'll get the things down. What is there to go?"

"Just a trunk and the two cases."

He brought his head quickly around to her.

"What about the other things, your own things?"

"That's all that's going this mornin'."

He now glanced at the four girls standing on the far side of the table. They weren't dressed for outdoors, and he brought his gaze back to her and said, "You're not leaving them here alone, surely?"

"For the time being," she said.

"I'll be back."

"It's a long journey," he said now, his voice gruff.

"Over two hours each way. That's if it doesn't snow."

His tone seemed to drag her shoulders up as she said evenly, "It won't take that long where I'm goin'. I want you to drive us back to the Hall." She watched his lower jaw slacken and drop; she watched his head nod two or three times; then he said, his tone soft now, "Yes, Ma'am ... Miss. Yes, as you say, it won't take as long going there."

The child now came towards her, almost at a run. He had been standing solemnly before the fire. He knew he was dressed for a walk, but he didn't like the walks on the bare land where the wind cut at his face.

But now the word Hall seemed to bring him out of his solemn stupor, and he associated the coachman with it and he knew that the Hall was home, and he cried eagerly, "Are we going home? Are we going home?"

Cissie looked down at him. For the first time since his father had left him he was looking at her with a look that did not hold hostility. And now catching hold of her hand he asked, "Are we going to see Grandpapa?"

After a moment she said, "Yes," then added, "Say good-bye to the children."

He turned, but still held on to her hand as he said, dutifully, "Good-bye." And they answered dully in the same way, except Nellie, and she muttered, "Tar- rah, Richard."

When the child saw the coach at the bottom of the slope he made a high, gleeful sound, and, tugging his hand from hers, ran over the wet ground towards it, and was only saved from falling by Micky. And when he steadied him the child laughed into his face and said, "I nearly fell," to which Micky replied, "You nearly did" ; then he lifted him into the carriage.

But it was Bowmer who assisted Cissie up; and when he tucked a rug round her knees her throat filled near to bursting, and she said "Thanks."

"You're welcome," he replied. He would never have dared say that to a member of the household, but at this moment he meant what he said.

During the journey the child chatted and talked, he touched her hand and leaned against her knee, and his every action drove the pain deeper into her.

At the present time she couldn't separate the pain in her heart from the pain in her body. All her bones ached, her throat was sore, and her chest felt rough. When she breathed in deeply she got a pain below her ribs as if the air were stabbing at her. She had a great desire to lie back and close her eyes, but she kept them wide and fixed them on the child, taking her fill of him that would have to last her a lifetime.

When the carriage drew up below the steps of the House the big oak door opened and showed Hatton standing there and unable to hide his astonishment.

When the person came up the steps with the young master by the hand his gaze flitted from one to the other; then he pushed the door wide and stood aside and allowed her to pass.

"Oh, Hatton, where is my Grandpapa?"

"He ... he is in his room. Master Richard. But he should be down... " He turned and looked towards the wide staircase and to the head of it where stood His Lordship. Then the child, running across the deep shadowed hall, for the blinds in the whole house still remained half drawn, cried to the stationary figure, "Grandpapal Oh, Grandpapa!"

Then he was scrambling up the stairs.

They met halfway; and as the child flung his arms wide and gripped his thighs. His Lordship bent down and cupped his head in his hands and made a deep sound in his throat impossible to translate. Slowly now he took his grandson by the hand and turned him round and went down the stairs to where Cissie was standing, and they looked at each other for a long moment before he said, "Will you come with me?"

She followed him across the hall and into a huge room, and towards a great open fire; and the child danced round them and talked and chatted, telling his grandfather now, in an almost joyous form, about the little girls and the funny bed, and that he didn't like porridge.

And where was Nanny? And he was going to see Aunty Isabelle.

When he made to run away from them His Lord ship caught hold of his arm and said softly, "Presently presently. Be still now." Then, with his other hand, he indicated that Cissie should sit on the couch opposite the fire.

It was a low couch, and when she sank into its deep upholstery her feet stuck out, and they looked ugly in her thick black boots and she brought them under her so that her skirt would hide them; then she laid one hand on top of the other on her lap and waited.

His Lordship was seated now and looking at her. He still held the boy dose to him, and he asked simply of her, "Why?"

She answered simply, "Because he was missin' you."

And at this his head dropped forward. Then abruptly getting to his feet, he rang a bell, and in a moment Hatton answered it and His Lordship said, "Tell Nanny she is required."

Almost immediately, as if she had been waiting in the hall, the girl appeared in the doorway--the house telegraph was very efficient--and as soon as the child saw her he pulled away from his grandfather and, running with open arms, he cried, "Oh, Nannyl Nannyl Where have you been. Nanny?" And she forgot herself so far as to drop on to her knees and take the child into her embrace and cry while she gabbled, "Oh Master Richard. Oh Master Richard."

Cissie didn't think she'd be able to bear much more. If only once he had greeted her as he had done the nurse she would have something to remember;

but all he had given her, until an hour before when he placed his hand willingly in hers, had been slaps and pushed and words like "don't," "no," and "I don't want to," and four other words which she couldn't bear to think of.

"Take the young master to the nursery."

"Yes, m'Lord. Yes, m'Lord." The girl pulled herself swiftly from her knees and almost ran out of the room with the child.

Now the door was closed and they sat in silence;

she sank into the deep couch which was like no bed she had ever dreamed of, and he sat upright in a great winged chair to the side of the fireplace.

It was over, and her child hadn't even said goodbye to her. How much could one stand of such pain? If you had the choice what would you take? The cutting off of a limb, or the breaking of a heart? She moved her head slightly. Her mind was asking her very funny questions. She was in for a fever, she knew she was. It had been coming on for days.

She would say what she had to say and then she would go. She put her hand under her shawl and into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew a large envelope and, bending slightly forward, she handed it to him, saying, "I won't be needing these now.

Perhaps you'll keep them, an' . an' give them to your son. "

He took the envelope from her and without making any comment extracted the two parchments from within it she had kept the letter;

that was hers and he looked at them. One was a temporary deed to a house called Fieldbum Place in the County of Northumberland. It was situated in four acres of freehold ground, and its cost, together with furnishings was eleven hundred pounds; the other was a letter to the effect that his son was leaving one thou sand pounds a year to Cecilia Brodie, to be made payable in monthly installments. He looked up at her.

"Have you read these?"

She shook her head, "No; I ... I can't read much. But... but I know what they are; he ... he told me."

"And you are returning them?"

"Yes, Sir."

He stared at her for a moment. This girl had nothing, nothing in the wide world, and her future, as far as he could gather, held nothing;

and yet she was willing to give up what a great many would consider a fortune. She could have closed her eyes to the child's need of him and gone on the assumption that children soon forget, and very likely in better surroundings, such as the one this deed indicated, the child would have forgotten him and this house. But because the child was unhappy she brought him back and, therefore, renounced a life which must appear like heaven compared with that which she was enduring. He folded the deeds up and, returning them to the envelope, he handed them to her, saying, "You must give these to my son himself. It will be for him to say whether he will take them or not."

Her eyes widened slightly and she murmured, "I ... I thought he would be gone. He ... he said he was sailin' the day."

"Not until this evening. He is to leave at noon."

He rose to his feet, and when she also made to rise he put his hand out towards her, saying, "Please stay seated."

Going to a row of small knobs that were attached to the wall behind the red-corded bell rope, he pulled on the third one; then walking towards her again he stood looking down at her, and he moved his tongue over his lips a number of times before he said, "May I say that I am deeply grateful for your action, and that I understand what it must have taken for you to come to this decision. If there is anything, anytime, that I can do for you or yours you have only to call on me. You understand?"

She moved her head once and said, "Yes, Sir. And thank you."

He still continued to stare at her; then he said, "If my son cannot induce you to accept" --he pointed to the envelope lying on her lap"--then I will see that provision is made for you as before."

Again she said, "Thank you. Sir."

She was now attacked by a fit of coughing that racked her chest and he said with some concern, "You must have something warm to drink." And when the door opened at this moment and Cunningham appeared he turned to him, saying, "Tell Master Clive to attend me here immediately. Also tell Hatton to bring a hot beverage for my... my guest."

"Yes, Sir." Cunningham did not once let his eyes rest on the figure on the couch but turned swiftly and went into the hall; and after giving Hatton the order he hurried up the stairs and to Master dive's bedroom. After knocking on the door and being bidden to enter he said, "The master wishes you to attend him in the drawing room. Sir."

"Very well, Cunnings."

"He ... I... I think I'd better warn you. Sir, there ... there is a lady with him."

"Yes, Cunnings?"

"She ... she's brought Master Richard back. Sir. He is up in the nursery now."

Glive stared at the man, and Cunningham said below his breath, "I ... I thought it only fair to warn you. Sir."

"Thank you, Cunnings. Thank you."

When the door had closed on the valet Clive stood still in the middle of the room. She had brought the child back. Why? Whyf She should at this moment have been on her way to the house. Now he'd have to look on her again, and it could only add to his other torment. But why had she brought the child back? She wanted him. Crawling through that hole for years to see him, the hunger in her heart deeper than the hunger in her belly--why had she done it? He looked round the room as if searching tor an answer. Then going to the valise, the same he had left the house with when he went on his first voyage, he closed it;

then straightening his cravat and pulling down the skirt of his coat, he went out of the room and down the stairs and into the drawing room.

His father looked at him over the distance, and then he turned to the girl on the couch and bowed slightly to her before walking down the room. He did not pause as he passed his son but he looked hard at him;

then, his back straight as always, his head held erect, he went out, and his son would have been surprised to know that the deep private thoughts in his father's mind at this moment were as near his own as was possible.

When he reached the couch he slowly sat down on it, but some distance from her, and, like his father, he asked her, "Why have you brought him back?"

She looked at his grey, grave face. It didn't look young anymore. She said, "He ... he wasn't happy;

he was fretting as I knew he would. And . and what's more"--she made a slow, sad movement with her head" --he never took to me. He even had a dislike for me. "

"Oh nol Nol" He moved an inch or two towards her and bent his head forward.

"You're imagining things; he could never dislike you." He did not add, "No one could dislike you ... except, except Isa- belle."

"He did. It was ... it was hard to stomach but he did, until this very mornin', when he knew I was bringing ... bringing him home." She stared into the deep grey eyes that were holding hers and some part of her was surprised that she was talking to him in an ordinary way, as she would to Matthew, not waiting for the right words to come to her, but just saying what was in her mind. She said now, "You'll let him stay here, you won't send him any place else will you?" And he asked quietly, "Where else could I send him?"

She began to cough again, and he screwed up his face at the harshness of it and said, "You have a cold" ; and at that moment there was a tap on the door. It opened and Hatton came in, followed by the second footman bearing a tray. Hatton now placed a small table to the side of the couch and, putting the tray on it, said, as if speaking to a member of the household, "I hope you find all you need ... Miss." And she looked at him and said, "Thank you."

When the servants had gone and she had made no attempt to drink the soup, or eat the hot rolls and odd-shaped pieces on the plate that looked like chicken, he bent over and pulled the table further towards her and said gently, "Drink the soup," and handed her the bowl and the spoon, and she found herself drinking it gratefully.

She had an odd feeling about her as if she weren't really here and didn't care where she was, and the feeling was growing every minute.

She did not stand any longer in awe of the servants or His Lordship, and certainly not of him sitting there. She was halfway through the soup when she remembered about the papers. They had fallen from her lap onto the couch, and she picked them up and handed them to him, saying, "I... I won't need these now."

"That's nonsense." His voice was sharp.

"You'll need them as much as before; you can't possibly stay in that place any longer. You must accept them."

She shook her head as she gulped a spoonful of soup, "No, no; I couldn't. It wouldn't be right. Anyway, I just couldn't. An'..." she turned towards him and there was a deep sad softness in her face now as she added, "I'd be out of me element. I wouldn't know what to do, or how to go on. And what's more I'd be among strangers."

He was about to reply, "You'll never be short of friends when you've got money," but he resisted and said firmly, "They're yours, the house and the money have both been made over to you."

"No, no." She was again shaking her head.

"Your father is goin' to do what he did afore, an that'll be enough. I want nothin' more, just enough to keep the hairns--the children--warm inside and out until they're able to fend for themselves." She took another spoonful of soup, then finished conversationally in a slow quiet tone, "It won't be long now. Nellie's going on six, Sarah's ten. She should be out in place, but she's not strong, Sarah."

He stared at her. She was talking as she had never talked to him, and she was more beautiful in this moment than he had ever seen her. Her face was flushed with the chill she had, he supposed; her lips were moist and tempting, her eyes were deep and warm; even the scar on her cheek was like a large beauty spot. God! he mustn't think about the scar, or the cause of it. It was over, finished. He had escaped.

Thanks to the miller. Where would he be now but for the miller? And the miller loved her. He was a married man and he loved her. Why hadn't he married her? There must have been a reason. Perhaps he hadn't known her long. But there was one thing certain: he knew her now and wanted her. There were all kinds and shades of wanting, there were all kinds and shades of love. Why had this girl been brought into the pattern of his life?

Or, at least, if she'd had to come, why couldn't she have come as one of his own class? But what was his class now? He had fallen between two stools, and today he was climbing back onto the lesser of them, from where he'd rise, he supposed, to the glorified position of captain some day. As a captain of a ship he could have married her; as first mate he could have married her; but as captain or first mate he was still, underneath the skin, Clive John James Horatio Fischel, and heavily conscious that one day he'd bear the title of lord.

He now asked softly under his breath, "How is the miller?" and she answered, "He was well when I last saw him."

"I'll ... I'll never be able to repay him. Will you tell him that?"

She made no answer to this and he went on, "Nor to forgive myself for all the wrong I have done you." His head was bowed deep, and she looked at it. His hair was very fair, almost silver. She had the crazy desire to put her hand out and stroke it. What was wrong with her? Was she forgetting what this man had once done to her? Yes, perhaps;

anyway it wasn't good to go on harboring animosity. She said softly and very, very gently, "You mustn't blame yourself anymore. You know, I was thinkin' in the night about something that me da said." There she was going again, talking ordinary-like to him. What was the matter with her? But she couldn't stop herself, and so she went on, "He used to say, " Time is to the mind as goose fat to a rough chest," and so about this time next year things'll look different. And I was thinkin' an' all that it wasn't really you who started all this, it was our Jimmy. You see...." She now leaned her head against the back of the couch because she felt it was about to wobble. She was feeling slightly dizzy, but she continued, "It started with him showing Joe how to set a trap for a rabbit. And yet I can't blame Jimmy, because we'd have been hard put many a time for a bite if it hadn't have been for Jimmy and his trap. No, I kept think- in' in the night, although it seemed to start with Jimmy yet there was another cause for it. And it wasn't me ma and da dying either, because we had been hungry when they were alive, yet somehow it was being hungry." She turned her head and looked at him.

"Yes, it was being hungry, I think, that started it in the first place. If people had enough to eat and could keep warm I don't think things would happen, do you?"

"Oh, my dearl" He moved his head in wide sweeps as she finished, "So what I mean is, you're not to blame yourself, 'cos you know...." She brought her body up straight on the couch, but she bowed her I head deeply forward towards him as she ended finally, "I'm ... I'm not sorry I had the hairn."

When he lifted himself towards her and grabbed her hands he startled her, but she left them in his. Their faces were but inches apart, and now, as he slowly raised her hands to his mouth, her heart pounded and the noise was loud in her ears as if she were standing near the river when it was in spate. His lips were pressed against her red rough knuckles.

[I They were warm, hot, and when they moved over her fingertips she felt it was too much to bear and she gasped and turned her head away on to her shoulder as her body stiffened against her wild, mad thoughts. She felt her hands returned to her lap. Then he was standing up; and when he spoke she dropped her head back on to her shoulders and stared at him.

"Good-bye, Cecilia. Think of me kindly, will you?" His face floated mistily before her gaze. She moved her head twice; then in answer she said one word. She didn't know whether she spoke it aloud or not, but what she said was, "Always."

She closed her eyes for a second, and when she opened them he was no longer there. When she heard the door close she turned her head in its direction; he was gone.

She brought her head round again and once more she leaned it against the head of the couch and stared towards the great blazing fire, and she knew he needn't have gone. If she had been scheming enough, or clever enough, she could have kept him and he would have been glad to stay. Yes, she knew that;

right deep within her she knew that he would have been glad to stay, and with her, an ignorant girl, who could only just write her name.

She didn't hear His Lordship enter the room; she didn't know he was standing to the side of her until he spoke, and when he asked, "You drank your soup?" she pulled herself to the edge of the couch, saying, "Yes, thank you. Sir." And now she rose, and she knew that if she didn't take a pull at herself she'd pass out, as she had done once before, right at his feet. And it mustn't happen a second time, for they would say she was just doing it. Yes, they would say that.

"I'll... I'll be going now. Sir," she said.

"Very well."

She walked slowly down the room, he by her side, and before they reached the door he stopped and said, "May I say again how very grateful I am to you? I shall always be in your debt. Cunnings will call upon you soon and tell you of my arrangements for you."

She said nothing to this, yet she wanted to talk, jabber. It was a strange feeling.

His Lordship accompanied her across the hall. He made a sign to Hatton who called to the coachman. Then, within Hatton's hearing and, as the butler said later he could hardly believe his ears, His Lordship bowed towards her and said, "If you would care to call at any time I shall be pleased to see you." He had not said "If you would care to come and see the child," but that was what he meant. Again she told e herself to keep silent. She now inclined her head towards him, then walked from him and down the steps to where Bowmer was waiting to help her into the carriage.

Fifteen minutes later Bowmer helped her out of the carriage and then found he had to help her up the slope; and when they entered the house he put her on a chair, and she said to him, in an odd voice, "Thanks;

I'll be all right now. " Looking at her face he didn't think she would be, but that wasn't his business and so he took his leave.

There was a blizzard raging when Matthew made his way, by road, it being the safest to the dwelling; and when Charlotte opened the door to him he saw that her face was red with crying. He was kicking the snow from his boots and leggings as he asked quickly, "What is it?"

"It's our Cissie; she's bad."

Inside the room he looked to where Cissie was lying on the straw tick before the fire, with Sarah kneeling beside her. When he reached them Sarah looked up at him dumbly, fear in her eyes, and he gazed down at Cissie.

Her breath was coming in short, hard gasps, pushing the padded quilt up and down as if it were worked by a pump handle.

He said quickly, "How long has she been like this?"

"Since yesterday, since she come back after takin' Richard to the Hall."

"She took him back?"

"Aye. An' she's been bad since. It got worse last night an' ... an' she told us to keep her warm. She brought the tick in here." She tapped the bed.

"She keeps talking and yellin' and she won't let's touch her hands. We've washed her face but she won't let's touch her hands."

He looked at Cissie's hands, tight against her breast, the fingers of one hand tucked into the other.

She turned her head now and looked up at him with a blank gaze and croaked, "The scarf was round her neck, round the hole.

"Twas all red, just the ends white, just the ends."

"She keeps on like that," said Sarah; "she keeps on about a scarf. And she was sittin' up in the night and yellin' about a woman with a gun.

She's gone wrong in the head. "

He turned and looked at Sarah in silence until Cissie began to ramble again, her head tossing now as she mumbled, "She was as long as the door and her feet stuck out from under the cloak. Matthew ... Matthew he put his cloak over her, an" Clive . Clive . Clive. " Her voice trailed away. Then she pushed herself up on her elbow and began to cough, and Sarah held her and when she lay back she caught hold of her sister's hand and said between gasps, " He sat on the wood block, just like her, like dead, an' . an' he had the same look in his eyes, when . when. " Her voice again trailed away.

Sarah said now, "We should get somebody, a woman from the hamlet." And he asked, "What?" then exclaimed harshly, "Nol Nol" That was the last thing they wanted in here, a woman who, listening to her ravings, would soon put two and two together, and then where would they all be.

"Is it the fever, Matthew?" Sarah now whispered, and he said, "No, not the typhoid. I think it's a sort of pneumonia."

"Will she die?"

"No! Nol" Her question brought him up on to his feet, and he said briskly as he took his coat off, "Get e some boiling water going. And you" --he turned to Charlotte and Annie"--stop your sniveling now and bring me some covers, top bedding.

Go on. "

He rolled up his sleeves, saying to Sarah, "We'll make a sort of tent an' fill it with the steam from the kettle.... Put a bit of sacking round the bottom to save the soot falling off it. And get Charlotte to keep the kale pot boiling."

"Clive ... Clive."

He looked down on her. She was thrashing the cover with her joined hands as she gasped out the name, and his face hardened for a moment as he thought. She must think of him as that. But what odds. What odds now, for if she wasn't seen to and quick she wouldn't be able to think anything, she would die. His father had gone like this, not through his broken back but just with. the chill.

It snowed all day and it lay thick, and when darkness came and a keen northeast wind started to blow, it gathered into deep drifts which piled against the dwelling and muffled all sound like a great feather tick.

The heat in the room was almost unbearable. Matthew felt he was sitting in a steam bath; he was wearing only his shirt and breeches and they were both sticking to his skin. Except for the time he had galloped back to the mill he had been on his knees most of the day and under a tent-like structure held by the girls, while he supported the steaming kettle. Twice he'd had to lift her while the girls had pulled the sweat-soaked coarse sheet from underneath her and put a dry one in its place. And he had seen her body for the first time when he had rubbed it with warm towels, and he had groaned inwardly the while. Now it was close on nine o'clock and there was a long night to face, and she seemed to be getting worse with every minute of it.

Nellie and Annie were in bed in the cave. Sarah, worn out, was sleeping huddled up on a blanket between the foot of the mattress and the cave wall, and Charlotte was making a brave effort to keep awake and to hand Matthew the things he needed.

There were two candles burning on the mantel piece and a lantern stood in the middle of the table. Although the room held sounds of Cissie's agonized breathing, the wood crackling in the fire, and the water bubbling in the big black kale pot on the low hob, the place was strangely quiet.

He himself felt very tired sapped, in fact. There was a cramp in his leg and he was in the act of pulling himself to his feet when Charlotte let out a smothered scream and he swung round to see her with her hands across her mouth staring at the little window. His eyes flicking to it, he saw, above the banked snow on the rough ledge of stone that sup ported the frame, a face. One second it was there, the next it had gone. Although the impression had been as fleeting as lightning he had recognized the eyes in that face.

As he rushed across the room he grabbed his coat from the chest and the lantern from the table. The next minute he was outside pulling the door closed behind him. Stretching his arm to its fullest extent he swung the lantern high and in its arch he saw the dark, bulky figure stumbling away in the snow. He ran down the path the children had cut earlier in the drift leading to the wood house, and when he reached the end of the wall he floundered into deep snow and shouted above the wind, "I hope you're satisfied." Then he stood for a moment before turning about and going into the house again.

When he had gone home earlier in the day he had said to her frankly, "I'll be out all night." She had been cutting some material on the table and had a pair of scissors in her hand. She had pulled her fingers from the handles and gripped them like a man does a dagger before plunging it forward, and he had answered her ferocious look by saying, "If it was for that I could have stayed out nights years ago; I'm goin' because she's ill, very ill. It's pneumonia an' there's only the hairns there."

He had watched her gulping on her spittle before she growled out, "It's usual to get a woman to nurse another; she's near the hamlet."

And to this he answered, "Aye, she is; but you and your like have made it impossible for her to go near the hamlet for years. Anyway, few will risk their necks over that land in weather like this."

"But you will.... You will."

"Aye, I will." He nodded at her, and on this she stabbed the scissors point down into the wooden table. Then she said under her breath, "I'll bring Parson Bainbridge to you and I'll get him to hold you up from the pulpit. He's done it afore to bring folks like you to heel."

His face darkened at this and he said slowly, "You bring Parson Bainbridge here or go to him and, I'm telling you, I'll prove your words right. Just think on that. You bring him here an' I'll not only take her but every bitch I can get me hands on. And I'll pay them well. Aye, by God, I'll pay them well. I'll see the miller's money is put to some good. Now you think on it." And with that he had left her. Back in the room. Charlotte said, "Who was it?" and he answered, "Likely somebody lost their way." She stared at him, not believing him, but said nothing more, until Cissie began rambling again, croaking out words, "Soup. Soup." Turning from her knees she said, "She keeps on about soup but she can't drink any. And she's at that again, pushing the back of her hand across my mouth."

"Get by," he said, and taking Charlotte's place he began to wipe the running sweat from Cissie's face and neck.

Her breathing now was becoming even more difficult. She tossed from side to side and moaned and croaked out the child's name.

"Richard. Richard."

It was around two o'clock in the morning, when the crisis was at its height, that she spoke his own name.

"Matthewl Matthewl" she said, and he soothed her and whispered, "Yes, my love?" And then she said, "Clive. Poor dive."

When she pushed her hand up towards his face he gripped it in both of his and brought it down to his breast, and when again she said, "Clive. Poor Clive," he dropped his teeth tight down on to his lip.

Her coughing began to rack her body, and the beat of her heart raced against him as he had felt no heart race before, and the sweat ran from her pores and soaked him, and he began to use Parson Hedley's prayers, together with his own form of bargaining, beseeching the Almighty not to take her and promising Him payment in return. He could ask anything of him and he would do it, if only He wouldn't take her.

When he became aware of the four girls standing around him he knew that some time had passed for he hadn't heard them come. He also became aware that his calves were in an excruciating cramp and his left arm was dead with numbness and that his shirt was stuck to his back and his own body was running sweat. He stared down at the head lying on his arm and for a moment he thought she was gone. Then she made a sound in her throat and phlegm came out of her mouth, and he withdrew his arm and laid her back on the pillow; and more time elapsed while he and the children stared at her. Then Annie's weeping forced its way into his mind, and he turned to her, he turned to them all and said, "She'll be all right, it's over."

At eight o'clock the next morning when he made his way into the mill yard Straker said to him,

"What's happened the missus?" and he stared at the man a whole minute before he asked, "Isn't she back?"

The answer seemed to surprise Straker, for he said, "You knew she was out then?"

Again he didn't answer immediately, but his mind was moving fast. If she hadn't come back she had been out there all night, likely fallen into a drift, and that would mean--he wouldn't even let his thoughts pronounce the words, but it Straker knew the reason why she had gone out in a blizzard then there'd be talk, dangerous talk. He said now, "Of course I knew she was out; she brought some soup over. I was with a friend who's got pneumonia. I told her I was stayin' the night. She she left about nine. Have you been indoors?"

"Aye." Straker shook his head now.

"I went in the kitchen. The fire was still banked down, the breakfast wasn't set. I thought it was funny. I called upstairs and when I got no answer I went up and knocked."

He now hurried towards the house, saying over his shoulder, "I'll change me things, they're wet, then we'll go and look."

In the kitchen it was as Straker said; and he stood now gripping his chin tight in his hand. Then he went swiftly to the fireplace and picked up the kettle that was bubbling gently against the banked-down fire and brewed himself some tea; and after he had hurriedly changed his clothes he gulped the tea quickly, then went out again.

Straker was waiting for him in the yard, and the old man said, "Where will we look first?"

"We'll keep to the road," he said, "to the turnpike, then cut up on the fell. That's the way she came."

They did this, and it took them two hours before they came in sight of the habitation. But there was no sign of Rose. Nor when other searchers joined them and spent the day in the blizzard did they find her;

they didn't find her until the third day when the snow had ceased falling and the gale-force wind, whirling fanatically, made unnatural valleys and hills all over the fell. It was the barking of a sheep dog that drew the searchers to the quarry. And there they saw, uncovered by the wind, the body of the miller's wife still clinging to her lantern. She must have slipped off the edge and tumbled to the bottom; and being stunned, she had frozen to death, then was buried by the drifts.

It wasn't until after her funeral when the mourners had gone and only his mother, his grandmother, and his aunt remained that he allowed himself to realize that he was free, and what this meant. It was his mother who actually forced the realization to the surface, for during the five days Rose had lain in the parlor he had told himself he must try and do the decent thing. For the time she lay in the house he mustn't allow himself to think of the future. It was there shining bright, but he couldn't open the door to it until she was in her grave. And now even then;

there was the period of respect to be maintained. And then his mother had said, "We'll move over the morrow."

He had been sitting to the side of the fireplace while they were at the table picking at the remains of the ample refreshments that had been provided, and he was turning his head slowly towards them when she added, "I won't bring the beds, just odds and ends." Putting his hands on the arms of the chair and slowly pushing himself upwards he looked at her and said, "What was that you were saying?"

"We'll move over the morrow."

"You'll move over the morrow?"

"Are you deaf? That's what I said."

"No, I'm not deaf; and yes, that's what you said. But that's not what's going to happen." His voice was slowly rising now.

"You're not moving over here the morrow, or at any other time."

They were all staring at him and he swept his eyes from one to the other.

"Get that into your head, all your heads. I don't need you here, I don't want you here, you're stayin' where you are."

"Who's going to look after you?" His mother was on her feet now facing him.

"There's Peggy; she'll cook for me."

"She can't run the house, and she's only a servant;

you've got to have somebody to run this. "

"Aye, I'll have to have somebody to run this place, Mother, but it's not going to be you."

She pressed her lips together, wagged her head from side to side, pushed out her chest, then cried at him, "Now look you her el But before she had finished he was bellowing at her, " And look you here.

And this is the last time we'll talk about it. You're not comin' into this house. Mother, nor you. Gran, nor you. Aunt Millie. And something else I'm going to tell you. I don't want you even here visitin', and if you put your foot back after the day do you know what I'll do? I'll turn you out of where you are now, family or no. Ted Joyce's cottage is vacant at the end of the village. I own that. There's three rooms there an' that should be enough for you, and that's where you'll end up if you don't do as I say. Arthur Spragg is after the business, he wants to start his son up in it. He's been at me this last few months to sell him it, but he wants the house with it. He's offered me a decent price an' all. Now I hadn't any intention of telling you this but now I am telling you. You try to interfere with my life from now on and you'll end up in Joyce's cottage, the lot of you, and with your money cut down into the bargain. "

"You're unnatural." It was his grandmother speaking, and he turned on her and cried, "Aye, perhaps I am, but I've come from unnatural stock, from you and her." He bounced his head towards his mother now, and addressing her again he said, "You led me father hell for years. In a way he was glad when he broke his back and you couldn't push him anymore. And you bullied and thrashed me from I was in petticoats. And since I've been a man you've tried to rule me life.

But now it's finished; I don't care if I never set eyes on any of you again. Keep your noses clean and you' can stay where you are, but should I hear anything like, say, detrimental to me character and I trace it back to you, you'll be down at the end of the village as if a cuddy had kicked you. So I'm warning you. "

"You'll come to a bad end." His mother's voice was low and trembling.

"And she with you. I know why you don't want us here. It's 'cos of that trollop, that fell trollop. And another thing I'll say when I'm on. I'll bring it into the open; I wasn't going to but I will now. You can't tell me that Rose was taking that one soup, she had more likely gone to see what you were up to."

He stared at her, then said slowly and deeply, "I'm warning you. Go home and think whether you want to end your days in Joyce's cottage.

And mind you, I don't care a damn or a tinker's cuss what people will say about me if I do it, but believe me, all of you"-he thrust his glance over them" --that is what I'll do should you open your mouth about me or my business in the future. Just one whisper, that'll be enough to come back to me. Now get your things on and get yourselves away. "

A minute or two later they came walking out of the parlor in single file, dressed for the road, and like three witches they stared at him.

But none of them spoke, except with their eyes. They went out, and not until he heard the cart crunching across the yard did he move.

Slowly he began a tour of the whole house, going from room to room, and finishing up in the attics. The place was silent, empty, but he comforted him^)f}f A it'l/ a--' W L* t- ! (r "^ ^ lL't-&

self it wouldn't remain that way for long, for he'd soon have her here, have them all here.

How long would he have to wait? The decent time would be a year; but.

God above, a year was a long time. He wouldn't wait a year, perhaps nine months;

no, six. Ther'd be talk if he did it in six, but damn the talk.

He did it in three.

It was a day in early April. The sky was high, the sun was shining, the wind was fresh but not cold. It was the first day in the year that you could go outside and not shudder.

They had all been up since dawn; in fact, the children, like herself, had hardly slept. They had put on their new grey serge frocks and shining black boots and they had tied their hair with bright new hair ribbons and were ready two hours before the cart was expected.

Cissie had not put on her best clothes straightaway but had busied herself with tying up their ordinary clothes and the bedding in bundles, stacking the crockery in the basket that had been a cradle, and putting everything they were taking to the side of the door for easy fetching. And not until all was ready, with the exception of one last thing she had to do, did she dress herself for her wedding.

When she was attired in a grey alpaca dress with a cape to match, a blue straw bonnet resting on her brown hair, and a pair of black buttoned boots on her feet, she went to the top drawer of the chest and took out the long envelope and looked at it. The letter that had accompanied the envelope when she had first received it she had burned last night, and this morning when Mr. Cunningham came she would hand him back these deeds that he had brought when she was ill, and then it would all be ended, at least outwardly.

When she heard the children talking, not laughing and shouting, she knew Mr. Cunningham had arrived, and when he came in through the door he stopped and surveyed her and she felt herself blushing.

"How becoming. How very becoming." He kept moving his head slowly up and down as he advanced towards her; then gallantly he said, "You didn't need anything to enhance you, but your dress has insisted upon it."

She smiled shyly. She liked this man, she liked him very much.

"Will you take a seat?" she said.

"We're all upside down."

Placing two packages he had been carrying on the table, he indicated that she be seated first, and when he sat down and his eyes had dropped to the envelope in her hand, she held it out to him, saying, "I would like you to give that back to His Lordship, and thank him very much. As I said the other day I won't have any use for either after this."

Cunningham now joined his hands together and leaned towards her and said quietly, "I conveyed your message to His Lordship and he has told me to say to you the matter is out of his hands, the young master left the business arrangements with the solicitors Weir and Dixon, and it is with them you must deal. But, as His Lordship pointed out, they will be unable to do anything further about the matter until Master Clive returns--and the Virago might be away for years." He paused now and surveyed her with a gentle expression before he said, "May I offer you my own advice? You see, one never knows what is going to happen in life; circumstances change. What we reject today we long for tomorrow. So my advice to you is simply to keep them by you--they will eat no bread."

It was his homely statement ending his pedantic way of speaking that made her smile at him and say after a moment of pondering, "Perhaps you're right;

but I'll have to put them to one side, out of sight, for Matthew'll have none of them. Still, I'll do what you say. You've . you've been very kind to me all along, very kind. "

"I couldn't have been otherwise."

She drooped her head; but after a moment she lifted it and said quickly, "But ... but I can't go on taking the five guineas. You, you told him?"

"Yes, and His Lordship understands that." He reached out and lifting from the table one of the packages he handed it to her, saying, "His Lordship would like you to accept this as a wedding gift. He would like you to buy something with it entirely fo:" yourself. "

She undid the parcel and before her startled gaze she unwrapped a trinket box. It was made of silver, but the lid was padded with red velvet to form a pin cushion, and when she lifted it, there, filling the box in neat rows right up to the top, were golden sovereigns. She gasped at the sight of them and Cunnineham said, "There are a hundred;

I counted them myself. " His smile was prim and pleased.

"Oh." She wagged her head from side to side and looked at him, unable to find words; and to cover her embarrassment he brought forward the second parcel, saying, "This is a little gift from myself to you both.

I hope you enjoy the contents every day. "

And now she unwrapped an elegant pewter coffee pot with a graceful spout and an ornamental lid, and all she could do now was to close her eyes tightly and try to stop the tears from welling out; and he said, "There, there now. Please, please don't upset yourt fit; uwennig rwce self. The miller would wring my neck if he thought I had made you cry."

Again the homely saying brought her smiling, and, stretching out her hand, she took his and said, "Thank you. I ... I can't say all that I feel but ... but thank you. And will you thank His Lordship for me?

Thank him very kindly. " Then rising to her feet, she put the two gifts on the table and, resting her hands to the side of them, she looked downwards as she said now soberly, " I have never asked afore but I'd like to know how . how the child's farin'. " And he replied, with equal soberness, " He's very happy. If it's any help for you to know this, I can say he's extremely happy, and the household is almost back to normal. His Lordship was somewhat ill following Miss Isabelle's accident; it was such a tragic accident. " She turned to him. There seemed something in the way he had stressed the word " accident" that brought fear rushing into her, but he looked her straight in the face as he finished, " But he's over it now, and the child is his one thought and concern. "

She nodded her head slowly and said, "I'm glad. An' thank you for telling me, Mr. Cunningham."

Now the sound of the children calling and laughing came to them. She went to the door, and there was Matthew coming up the slope. Some of them were dancing round him, but running towards her were Mary and Bella, and she enfolded them in her arms as they both cried, "Oh, our Cissie! Our Cissie!" and when she held them from her to look at them, they looked at her and almost simultaneously cried, "Eehl you look bonny, our Cissie."

Matthew was standing behind them and amid the babble he didn't speak;

he just gazed at her, then from her to Mr. Cunningham standing within the doorway, and the two men nodded at each other and smiled.

As if the children had rehearsed it they all ran into the house and grabbed up a bundle each and ran down with it to the cart; and as Mr. Cunningham surveyed the nine of them scampering over the slope he said to Matthew, "Will you have room? I'm sure His Lordship wouldn't mind if we used the carriage."

On this Matthew turned to him, and for a second, a veil came over the brightness in his eyes and he said, "Thanks all the same, but we'll manage with the cart." Then he added with slight pomposity, "I could have brought the trap along but I wanted them all to be together." And Cunningham inclined his head and replied smilingly, "It's understandable."

Cissie went back into the room and she picked the two gifts up from the table. Then she looked about her, at this dwelling place where she had lived for over five years, or was it twenty-five, or fifty? She was twenty-one years of age but she felt old, she had felt old since her illness, since the morning she had returned from the Hall. She shook her head to form a barrier to her thinking, then swung swiftly about to see Matthew in the doorway.

Coming and standing before her, he looked into her eyes and asked, "Are you ready?" and she answered softly, "Yes, I'm ready." And at this he put out his hand and gently touched her cheek, then took her by the arm and led her away from the habitation, over the slope and down to the road to where the nine of them were seated on the cart, their faces bright and smiling; and Jimmy, still small, still dark, and still thin in spite of his fifteen years, called to her, "Shall I get down, our Cissie, and run alongside and shout " Boy a ha' penny oot'? " And at this they all roared with laughter; even Mr. Cunningham laughed, and with his mouth wide and relaxed.

When Cissie was seated on the high box beside Matthew the small neat man reached up and, shaking first her hand and then his, said, "I wish you both every happiness," and they thanked him. Then Matthew cried, "Gee-up there!" and the cart lumbered away in the direction of the church and Parson Hedley.

The girls sitting on the bundles and the boys with their legs dangling over the back of the cart waved to Mr. Cunningham and he waved back, as did Bowmer from his seat high up on the coach. Then the valet entered the coach and sat stiffly on its leather seat, impatient now for it to reach the Hall so that he could inform his master that the young person was now settled--which would imply that he no longer need be concerned for her living in the makeshift dwelling; moreover, her new home would be some considerable distance from the Hall, and this fact alone would ease embarrassment as the years went on and the child grew.

It was two hours later when the cart pulled into the mill yard and even before it had come to a stop Joe, Jimmy, and William had jumped off and were calling to the girls to get down, but when the girls did alight they stood quiet and slightly subdued now, awed by the wonder of their new home.

When Matthew lifted Cissie down from the seat, he held her for a fraction of a second longer than was necessary; then, taking her arm, he led her across the yard and as he went he called to William and Joe, saying, "See to them; give them their feed and a bit rubdown, then come along in." And they scampered away, crying, "Right-ho, Matthew. Right-ho."

When the rest of the children made to run forward into the inner yard Cissie cautioned them gently, "Behave now. Behave." And they became quiet and curbed their excitement. Then Matthew was leading her over the threshold into her new home.

The kitchen smelled and looked the same as it had years ago. The copper and brass were shining, the fire was burning brightly, and today the long table was set for a meal; it all looked so cheerful and inviting, but her heart began to beat as if she were being threatened by an invisible presence.

She'd had her dream last night about the white house, and this one somehow didn't fit into it, but the other one would have, the one on the deed she carried in the envelope in her petticoat pocket.

There was a woman standing to the side of the table. She was a round, pleasant-faced creature, and Matthew said, "This is Peggy. She's a good help," and Cissie said, "Hello, Peggy." Peggy hesitated. She had never bowed her knee to his first wife. But then, she had been a rough piece. And he had brought the talk of the whole place about him for marrying this one, and the other one not three months dead in her grave. It was said this had been his fancy piece for years. But she was a different kettle of fish altogether from the other. And she was surprised by the look of her--she was slim and straight and had a sort of dignity about her. Her knee bent and she bobbed.

He now turned to Jimmy and said, "Take them to the rooms I showed you.

Go on. " And Jimmy, laughing and running across the kitchen, cried, " Come on with you's! " And, their excitement getting the better of them again, they scampered after him, which made Matthew turn to the woman and say, " They're not always like this, they'll calm down. "

She replied, "Bairns are hairns." And on this he led Cissie from the kitchen and into the parlor; and there he took her cape from her shoulders and untied the ribbon of her bonnet. Then, standing still, he gazed at her and said, "Well, here we are then. It's been a long time."

She nodded her head slowly and replied, "Yes, Matthew. It's been a long time."

"I never thought it would come, not really.... Did you?" He sounded nervous, not ill at ease, but not quite sure of himself at this moment.

"No."

"If ... if things hadn't happened as they have, would you have married anybody else?"

She could look at him and say truthfully, "No, I never would have, Matthew."

At this he caught her in his arms and pressed her tightly to him, whispering into her hair, "Aw Cissie, Cissie, I love you. Aw, how I love youl And I can't believe it, 1 just can't believe it. It'll be days ... and nights afore I can take it in."

He was looking at her again, and when he gathered her hands between his and brought them upwards towards his mouth he felt her whole body jerk and her fingers stiffen against his, and his eyes narrowed slightly as he peered at her. This is what she had done in the illness, tried to prevent him from touching her hands, not wanting them washed. She wasn't really well yet; her face still looked pea ky

That's one of the reasons he had pushed things to get her here, to build her up . and . and to love her. She was starved of love, as he was.

He asked gently, "Do you love me, Cissie?"

"Yes. Yes, Matthew, I love you." She could answer truthfully to this too, and when he said very softly, "You'll be happy, I'll see you'll be happy," she thought, yes, she'd be happy; during the time she didn't think of the child . and its father, she'd be happy.

BOOK FIVE 1853

Full Circle

The miller of Brockdale died on Christmas Day, 1851, aged forty-four years, and just when people said he was about to do big things.

It was around 1842 when the name of Miller Turnbull first began to be associated with causes, and not only in Shields and Jarrow and the smaller towns, but in the City of Newcastle. The miller, it was said, was a forward-looking man, quiet, stubborn, and not afraid to speak his mind. Through him, lesser men came to know the name of Lord Ashley Cooper, one of the gentry who strongly supported the Ten Hours Act, the man who in 1824 got through the Bill forbid ding the employment of women and children under ground in the mines, the man who was all for education, even of the poor.

With regards to education, it was said that the miller's brothers and sisters-in-law made up the best- educated family in that quarter of the countryside; it was also said that he had not only taught his wife, that is his second wife, to read and write, but had made her so damned learned she'd have no truck with ordinary folks.

Those who had visited the mill said the house was more like a mechanic's library than an ordinary home, with books in every room, and the younger girls talking of Goldsmith, Blake, Coleridge, and Shelley as if they were ladies bred, instead of one-time fell scum.

There was no doubt about it, the miller did a lot of good; but it was also said he could have done more if he had kept his wife's family on an even keel and not allowed them to get high-faluting ideas about themselves. It was this fact that made the miller suspect in the very quarters in which he should have been trusted, that of the agricultural worker.

The farm worker in the North was better oil than his brother in the South and the West Country at the time, because in the North, the living-in system still prevailed; laborers were bonded for the year and paid partly in kind with milk, meat, barley, peas, and bread, and in some cases butter, cheese, and vegetables, as well as bacon at the killings, and they had all the slack coal they wanted for a few coppers, if they could carry it from the pit. Whereas in the South the wage of a man on the land still did not reach ten shillings a week, and coal was a luxury even in the depth of winter, and since the famous Tolpuddle business of '34 it would seem that gags had been put in the mouth of every man who worked on the land. In some places where a man dared to spit the gag out, the squire or the parson saw that that man was penalized It was the fear of injustice and deportation that kept the farm laborer mute and stamped agricultural workers on the whole as a dull, half-witted lot of men.

But in the North and in the South one thing the farm workers still shared was their living conditions, and these were appalling.

It was against these conditions that Matthew worked. In 1844 he set an example by building two cottages for his workmen, with two rooms up and two down, and a fine larder and a wash house off, and at the bottom of a good square of garden an erection of his own designing, a water closet composed of ace ment hole over which stood a wooden framework, and the hole narrowed to a pipe that led to the burn. He also erected a pump that drew its water from the burn, and from which it was easy to carry sluicing water to the water closets. Matthew was very proud of this invention, and considered it very hygienic, for, as he pointed out, the burn was in constant flow.

In 1846, when William married an apothecary's daughter from Shields, Matthew built him a fine house, standing in a half acre of land within a quarter of a mile of the mill itself. It had a large kitchen and a parlor, three bedrooms and a garret, and besides the wash house coal house and stable there was, of course, the new sanitary arrangement--even better this one, (or the effluent didn't flow back into the river as it was too far away to pipe it, but into a huge cesspool; nor was their fresh water supply drawn from the river but from a well that Matthew had caused to be sunk at the bottom of the garden.

It was around this time that Matthew became really conscious of the danger of the river water, for it was into this that the effluent flowed, that cattle paddled and went to drink, that cats and dogs were thrown, and it was from this also that most of the hamlets and the villages drew their water supplies.

The fact that the river was fast running in parts failed now to convince him of its purity, for all along its length it was being used as a dump for filth.

It was in 1844, when typhoid was sweeping both sides of the river from South Shields to Gateshead and from North Shields to Newcastle, that Matthew's mother and grannie were taken, and also Nellie. Nellie had been thirteen and bonny and bursting with health, but she had been snuffed out like a tallow- candle in the wind, whereas Annie, who had always been weakly and who, too, had lain with the fever, survived.

There was no accounting, they said, for the workings of God. All man could do was to bow before His will. Matthew had let this pass, and concentrated on the river.

But in 1849 when his only daughter, the one child that Cissie had given him, died of the cholera at the age of eleven, he did not let it pass, but cursed God. He cursed Him in private and in public; he cursed Him to the face of his great friend. Parson Hedley. And he cursed Him to the damnation of his own soul, so said the righteous when, two years later almost to the day, after rising up from the laden Christmas table, he died.

He had left the table and staggered to the settle because of a violent pain in his chest, which he said wasn't like wind for he had hardly commenced to eat. An hour later, still sitting on the settle, strangely enough where the miller before him had drawn his last breath, he died, and more strangely still, of the same complaint. Matthew's death left Cissie a rich woman, for like Miller Watson, Matthew had speculated in property. It also left her with an eight-room house, not counting the attics, and only Annie and her to occupy it. Annie was to have been married in the spring of '52 but because of the time of mourning the ceremony had been put off till the autumn.

What, Cissie asked herself time and time again during the months which followed Matthew's going, was she going to do when Annie was gone?

Could she stay alone in this house? Why not? William was at hand, as were his six children, three of whom were triplets. And there was Jimmy and Ada and their four children in the wheelwright's house.

Jimmy would never let her be lonely. There was Mary coming over from North Shields every Sunday, happy and contented with her shipwright husband and her three fine children. There was Joe, still working under William and married to Kitty, a fat, happy-go-lucky individual who, as yet, hadn't given him any children. They were established in a cottage a short distance away which was to have been only temporary until Matthew found a suitable piece of land on which to build them a house; but he hadn't found it before Victoria died, and from the time she went he lost interest in doing anything for anyone.

Then there were the three girls, Bella, Sarah, and Charlotte. Sarah and Charlotte were well away. Years earlier, Matthew had set them up in a little milliner's business in a side street in Newcastle. Within three years they had gravitated to Collingwood Street with a fine display-windowed shop. And now the "Band Box" was a must for any lady of fashion. Oh yes, Sarah and Charlotte were well away, with fourteen girls in the workroom and their own apartments above the shop and a maid to look after them.

This left only Bella. As was to be expected, so was the general opinion of the family, Bella ran true to form. She was barely seventeen when she ran off and married an Irish laborer from Jarrow by the name of Shane Docherty. Shane was big, handsome, and gormless, and, as Jimmy said, that made the pair of them. Every year Bella brought a child into the world. The number had now reached nine; they were all healthy, bonny and wild, but if it hadn't been for Cissie they would have been starving and barefoot.

So, with twenty-two children visiting her, and their parents, add to this seeing to the accounts of the mill and the property--Matthew had taught her to do this in the early days--surely her time would still be fully occupied.

Part of the answer to the problem, and the answer troubled her, was that none of these things held any interest for her now. She still loved her family, but they were all set; for good or bad they had their own lives to lead. The other part of the answer was that she couldn't bear the thought of staying alone in this house.

Living in the mill had been bearable while Matthew was alive. The foreboding feeling that she had experienced when she had come into the kitchen on her wedding day had mostly, over the years, kept to the shadows; but now the shadows were lifting, and at times, especially at night, she felt there was a presence about the place, and it wasn't Matthew's presence.

Now she was alone and free. This last word filled her with guilt and made her turn on herself whenever it entered her mind and ask herself how she could ever think in such a way as to consider herself free from Matthew--Matthew who had been so good, so kind, so loving. But she knew, in the private recess of her being, a recess of which Matthew had been aware but had never entered, that it wasn't his goodness, his kindness, or his loving from which she was free but from his possessiveness.

If at sixteen she had experienced his possessiveness she would have sunk into it gladly, but she was a woman through hardship, although only twenty-one, when it enfolded her, and its tangents were many and subtle.

Matthew had never denied her anything in the way of clothes. Every year he had bought her two outfits, a heavy winter cloak and dress with bonnet to match, and in the summer a linen or a print; but always he chose the colors and the material, and never did he pick anything more gay than a light fawn. Once she had ventured to say, "I think I would like something pink, the color of the fringe on the shawl" ; and to this he had said, "It wouldn't become you." It took her some little time to realize that he didn't want her to be enhanced in any way; to the outside world he wanted her to appear neutral, not standing out from the crowd of wives of respectable citizens. It was small comfort to her that it was becoming the fashion among ladies of the time to wear subdued colors and to pad their bodies out of shape with as many as six to eight petticoats. Decorum seeping down from the palace in London had no meaning for her.

In his arms at night, Matthew would tell her she was beautiful; he would become an ardent lover and cover her body with his lips, but in the daytime he was the miller and she his wife, and he wished her appearance and manner to be such that she would claim respect from all. But as the years went on and the respect began to flow in to him and his wife in the form of invitations from his business associates, he politely refused them. Nor, she knew, did he like her around the yard when men were bringing their grain in, whether they be farmer, justice, or squire.

Twice a year he took her to the theatre in Newcastle; he took them all to the theatre in Newcastle; and these were great events in their lives. But he never took her to church on Sunday, not even to please Parson Hedley. "

His gifts to her were many, mostly in the form of books; but in the second year of their marriage he bought her a spinet and with delight she learned to play. He only bought her two pieces of jewelry: a plain brooch and a gold chain on which hung a pendant; neither of them was an exciting piece.

They had one serious quarrel in the first twelve years of their marriage; during the following two years they had many. The first was when they had been married but ten months. Matthew had come into the bedroom unexpectedly one afternoon and found her sitting reading the parchments.

He had thought she had returned the papers to His Lordship on their wedding morning when the valet had called, but when he found that she had kept them hidden from him and was now perusing them in secret his anger flared out at her. So this was why she had paid so much attention to her reading lessons, never failing each evening to get out the books, no matter how tired he was.

When he had made to snatch the deeds from her she had sprung away from him and put them behind her back, and the spirit that had brought her and them all through the years in the dwelling place came rising up, and she cried at him, "Don't touch them, Matthew. I'm tellin' you, don't touch them. I didn't want to keep them but His Lordship would have none of them, he said they belonged to me. I didn't want to upset you, that's why I never let on. I don't intend to use them, but I intend to keep them. They're mine. It isn't the value of them but it's all I have for the hairn." And at this he had cried at her,

"That's all you think about, the baim. That's why you're not with mine. Ten months now of loving and not a sign of one. An' why?

"Cos I haven't all of you. Oh, I know, I know. I know what I know. Clive!

Clive! Clive! You never ceased from calling his name all the time you were bad. God! An' after all he did. An' you know what he did, don't you? Not only rape, but murder. Aye, murder. "

"You never called it that afore," she cried.

"An' you know it was either her or me."

"Give them over here." He held out his hand and it was trembling, but still she defied him, saying, "No! No, I won't. If they're to be destroyed I'll see to it." And when he advanced on her she yelled at him, "I'm warning you, Matthew; if you take these from me I'll never think of you the same again, nothing will be the same again."

After a space of time during which they had looked at each other in pain, he had flung out of the room and she had collapsed into a chair where she sat staring before her. Then, going to the empty fireplace, she had placed the deeds in it; but when the match was alight she couldn't put it to the papers. She would never claim the house or the money, there was no need to. She had all she wanted, so why couldn't she bum the deeds? She didn't really know except that these two pieces of paper seemed to hold a desire for forgiveness; they spelled reparation for a wrong, not that she held the wrong against him anymore. She couldn't burn them, she couldn't.

Making sure that Matthew was in the mill she went into the attic and, finding a small wooden box, she squeezed the deeds into it; then moving the old trunk that they had brought from the dwelling, she pried up a floor board near a joist and carefully placed the box on the beam. Then she returned to the bedroom where she folded some paper to the size of the deeds, laid it in the grate, then set light to it.

Later that night she knew he had seen the ashes for he begged her forgiveness, and she gave it him. Five weeks later she told him that she was to have his child, and Victoria was born in November 1838.

It didn't matter to Matthew that his child was a girl and that the house was full of girls; he adored her from the moment she wailed her first cry in his arms and for the following eleven years he claimed her as his own. He petted and spoiled her and indulged her every whim;

no dark colors for Victoria, but soft muslins, silks, and velvets and all of rainbow hue.

Watching from the side, Cissie became fearful, more so with the years, wondering what would happen when her daughter fell in love, what would happen when young men came courting her, as they would do for she was beautiful, even breathtaking. Would Matthew let her go to another man?

She was never jealous of her daughter only fearful for her, and sorry she hadn't more children. It was her fault, she supposed, that Matthew's concentration was leveled towards the one thing she had given him.

Then in 1849 the scourge swept the North again and after only five days of illness Victoria died and Matthew went mad. And that was no exaggeration;

for a few days he seemed to have lost his reason, and when he returned to himself it wasn't to comfort Cissie for her loss, or to take comfort from her for his loss, but to make her feel responsible for the child's death. She had never wanted Victoria, had she? he had said. She had never loved her, had she? There was only one person she had loved. Aye, yes, perhaps two . aye, perhaps two. But her mind was on one all the time, wasn't it? The young upstart who rode in his carriage and on whom she tried to spv on her strolls over the fells.

Oh he knew, he knew; he hadn't been deceived all these wears.

With the going of Victoria the house changed. Jimmy, William, or Joe could do no riffht, whereas before they could do no wrong. He would not have any of the children visit the house; there was no more reading at nights, no music, no laughter. All their clothes were black, and the mourning went on for two years--in fact until the moment he died at the Christmas dinner.

And now this question: what was she going to do with herself?

The answer came in January of '53 when she had been in mourning for Matthew for fourteen months.

William had sent word that he wouldn't be able to get in for an hour or so as he was feeling low. Cissie knew he'd had a cold for some days and she tried to persuade him to stay in bed, but William was stubborn and did not take to bed easily.

It was a wet miserable day with flumes of sleet and a very high wind.

She put on her cloak and some heavy boots and was on the road making her way to William's house when she met Jimmy driving the cart.

"I was going to call in on you," he said; "I'm on me way to Jarrow."

"William's under the weather," she replied.

"He couldn't get in this morning."

"Well, jump up," he said laughing.

"We'll visit the sick together."

Then he turned the cart around and they made their way to William's house.

Matthew had designed the house so that the window of the parlor overlooked the valley and the village and the sweep of hills beyond and so you did not approach the front door from the road but followed a curving grass path around the side of the house to it.

Above the wind they heard the cries of the children at play in the hut to the far side of the house, but even above this there rose the voice of William, and he was shouting, "I can't do iti I tell you I can't.

An' I won't! " Then Jessie's voice stopped Cissie in her tracks and she pulled on Jimmy's arm and halted him, and they listened to their sister-in-law crying,

"Eight rooms and attics. What does she want with all them, living alone, and here eight of us in these four rooms and another coming? If you don't put it to her then I will."

Cissie and Jimmy exchanged glances. The voices were coming from the kitchen, the window of which was about three yards ahead of them.

"It's her place, she's earned it. Begod! if anybody's earned it she has. I tell you I'll not do it, not for you or God Almighty. Four rooms not big enough you say? There were ten of us in a cave out in the wilds...."

"Oh, my goodness gracious, not that again! Can't you forget that you once lived like a pig?"

This was followed by a ringing slap, and then silence, and quickly Cissie pulled Jimmy backwards and they made their way to the cart.

Jimmy turned it again and they rode back to the mill, and they didn't speak until they were in the kitchen.

Banging a fist into the palm of his hand. Jimmy exclaimed in deep anger, "By God! the nerve of it. The bloody upstart! Who does she think she is? Come from a potty little chemist's shop and brought up in rooms no bigger than match boxes behind it. I'd like to give her the length of my...."

"It's all right, it's all right. I don't mind. And you know" --she turned and confronted Jimmy"--she's right; what do I want with this place?"

"Don't be silly, our Cissie. If anybody's earned this place you have.

It's as William said. Aye"--he nodded at her" --an' it's a good job he did say it, or I'd have gone along there and lathered him me self

She laughed gently now and, turning from him, let her gaze wander slowly around the kitchen; then she said quietly, "Do you know. Jimmy, I've never liked this house."

There was a stunned silence before he said, "What!" And still with her back to him she nodded her head and continued to look about her, at the brass candlesticks still shining on the mantelpiece, at the copper pans still hanging around the fireplace, at the rocking chair at one side and the leather chair and settle at the other; nothing in this kitchen had been changed from the days when Rose Watson was mistress of it. Turning swiftly to him, she said with an eagerness he hadn't seen on her face for years, "Will you let Ada come into Newcastle with me tomorrow for a full day? Could you see to the hairns?"

He grinned slowly now, saying, "Aye. Aye, I can see to the hairns, and she'll be tickled to death. What you up to?"

"I'm going shopping. Jimmy. Yes" --she nodded slowly at him"--I'm going shopping...."

The next day, dressed in her black and driving the trap, she rode over to Jimmy's and picked up Ada, and amid waving and shouts from the children and, "Enjoy yourselves, but mind, be careful of the traffic," from Jimmy, they set off.

Ada, like Jimmy, was small and thin, and if there was one person she adored besides her husband it was her sister-in-law.

She had first made Cissie's acquaintance when she delivered a dress to her. For years, in fact from when she was eight years old, she had been employed in a sweat shop in Newcastle. At fourteen she had been apprenticed and gone to live in. She had worked from eight in the morning till eight at night; ten on Fridays and Saturdays. She had slept on a pallet bed on the floor with fifteen others; their food was little better than the workhouse fare; and her wage, when she was twenty, had reached the amount of five shillings a week, but that was because she was an expert cutter. The reason why she had been asked to deliver a dress to a place beyond Brockdale was that on one Sunday in a month she visited her grandmother in Jarrow and at this particular time more than half the staff were down with dysentery, they called it "the looseness." The delivery of the gown was overdue and the manageress took the opportunity of making use of the cutter. She did not tell her, because she did not know, that she would have to walk three miles from her grandmother's house to the mill.

When she arrived Cissie offered the small white- faced, pea ky-looking girl some refreshment and they had started talking. Jimmy had sat to the side and listened, and like his father before him, he was filled with compassion, and he had driven Miss Ada Ran- some, not only back to her grannie's, but all the way to Newcastle. And every Sunday during the next three months he had gone into Newcastle and brought her to the mill, which Ada likened to heaven.

And now she was going into Newcastle with Cissie to choose material, not black or brown, or grey or fawn, but as Cissie had just described, something in a red, a soft red. She said to her, "A crushed strawberry, that would suit you, Cissie. A crushed strawberry in a taffeta, perhaps with a sprig on it."

Cissie, the reins in her hands, a smile on her face, glanced at Ada and, her lips pursed tight, she moved her head in small nods before saying, "Yes, Ada, crushed strawberry, taffeta with a sprig on it."

The family was mystified at the change in their Cissie. Sarah and Charlotte hailed it with laughter and sold her two hats and two bonnets cost price of course. Bella hailed the change with sulky envy. Mary was a little shocked, William puzzled, Joe amused, and Annie didn't know what to make of . their Cissie--as a newlywed she was full of decorum-only Jimmy said nothing and waited and understood.

She did not wear the crushed strawberry with the sprig on it on the day she went on the special errand into town, for although it was spring and the sun was shining it was still rather chilly; but she wore the soft moss-green corded velvet suit with the short, tight jacket and a wide skirt that Ada had just finished tor her, and over her shoulders a short sealskin cape; on her feet, soft brown leather boots, and, almost matching the color of her hair, a hat with a sheen on it like that on a chestnut horse.

William and Joe gazed up at her from the yard, and Joe, still merry, said, "By! our Cissie, you'll have the dogs after you going into Newcastle like that." William said nothing, but he thought. What's come over her?

She smiled warmly at this particular brother: had she not him to thank for her rejuvenation?

"Gee-up there!" The sprightly cob pulling the neat trap trotted out of the yard, and Joe and William followed it to the gate and watched it along the road, after which they looked at each other, grinned, gave a little laugh, then shook their heads. It was not the first time Cissie had been to the offices of Weir and Dixon. One day in '44 she had received a letter that had been sent by railway post, which was exciting in itself. When she opened it she found it was from the solicitors stating that they would be grateful for directions regarding her money, which was accumulating. Did she desire them to invest it for her?

She was thankful to God that Matthew was in Newcastle that day. She didn't answer the letter, but when she next took the girls into the city to do some shopping she left them and made her way to the offices of Weir and Dixon, and there she met Mr. Weir in person and she asked him if he would be good enough to do what he thought best with the money, also to continue to let the house should it fall vacant.

Finally, she had told him quietly but firmly not to communicate with her again no matter what the situation. If she wanted to give him any further instructions she would call.

Mr. Weir had undoubtedly been surprised at the calm poise of his mysterious client; for he had been given to understand from private sources that the person was of low mentality, being little more than a gypsy, and had once lived wild.

Now, nine years later, she was sitting in exactly the same seat looking across the desk at the heavily jowled man who seemed to her to have grown very old in the intervening' time.

Mr. Weir, on his part gazing at his client, imagined that time had stood still, for she did not look a day older than when he had seen her last; in tact he could say that she almost looked younger, and she in her thirty-seventh year. She was a slightly disturbing person, he found, with her dress so gay, and he understood that her husband had been dead just over a year. Women were strange creatures, and this one before him very strange, but charming nevertheless. Ah, yes.

Although she did not speak like a lady, her voice having a strong Northern inflection, he noted that she made use of words, and in their right context. She must, he thought, have had some form of education.

And now, after all these years, seventeen years to be exact, she wished to view her property. He could not believe that she had never seen it. Surely, he would have imagined, she had gone on the quiet and looked at the house; but no, she assured him, she had never seen it.

This was a very strange affair, a very strange affair indeed. Here she was, a person of the common people, the widow of a miller who had left her quite warm, so she indicated, besides which she had been the recipient of a thousand pounds a year for the past seventeen years;

and this money, under his careful supervision, had trebled itself.

What was more, she owned the property that was bringing in a hundred a year, or had been up till three months before. She was a rich woman, and he told her so.

"Your estate is considerable, Mrs. Turnbull," he said. And to this she inclined her head, saying, "That is good to know for ... for if I like the house I

may. " She hesitated; she was about to say " live there," but the correct term was " take up residence there," and on an inward laugh she said just that.

"Indeedl" "Yes."

"We have a dient interested in it, but ... but he hasn't made up his mind yet."

"Well, we'll wait and see what I think about it first."

"Of course, Mrs. Tumbull, of course."

"How much did you say that my account stands at now?"

"Around thirty thousand, give and take a few hundred; the expenses have been borne, as arranged" -he paused"--by the donor."

She looked at him across the desk for a moment, then said quietly, "I would like you, Mr. Weir, if you would, to take a thousand pounds by way of recompense for the work you have done on my behalf."

He slowly rose from his seat and, coming round the desk, he stood before her, his hands joined, and he stared down at her while moving his head slowly;

then he said, "Madam, you are most generous, indeed more than generous. And I am most grateful, most grateful."

And Mr. Weir meant what he said; he was a warm man himself and not in need of a thousand or two, but in all his years of service to the public no client of his had said "Here is a thousand to recompense you for your work." They paid him his charges, which weren't low, and therefore felt he was getting his due. Her donor, whose affairs he had seen to since the day he had come to this office and asked him it he could find an establishment for him, had never, when on the two visits he had paid him during the last seventeen years, said, "There is fifty guineas extra for your services." The gentry weren't made that way.

Few people, when he came to think about it, were made that way. Those who pulled themselves up by their boot laces held on to their money even tighter than the middle classes or the gentry; yet here was this woman, not a lady according to set standards, yet not entirely of the common people; he didn't know into which class to place her, nevertheless she was offering him a thousand pounds. Now, taking her hand, he' pressed it warmly, saying, "Madam, I'm always at your service with or without your gift.

Nevertheless, I'll take it gratefully and thank you again most warmly. " He bowed low over her hand and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss it, and at this she firmly withdrew it.

She drove the trap through the press near the markets, up Newgate Street, along the Gallowgate;

then, asking the way, she took the road to Denton. Her heart was beating as it had not done for years, bumping in hard thuds against her rib cage. She knew what she was going to see. The house would be low and white, he had said black and white, but she knew it would appear all white when the sun shone on it, and the sun was shining sharply bright today.

And then she saw it. She had turned off the main road and gone down a tree-shaded grass track at the far end of which were two wooden gates.

These were open and she drove straight through. A man was working in a bed to the side of the drive and she stopped and said, "I have come to see the house, I have the key" ; and he touched his forelock and replied, "Aye, Ma'am." She drove on along the short drive and around the bend, and there it was. It was black and white, the black standing out more than the white. It had deep-latticed windows and a black oak door with a brass knocker and knob, and in the ordinary way she would have thrilled to it and said it was a lovely house, homely looking, inviting. But it wasn't the house she saw in her dreams.

Her heart had stopped its thumping. She got down from the trap, tied the cob to a horse post on the drive, and inserting a key in the lock she entered the house, dive's house, her house.

The hall was quite large for the size of the house;

it had a fireplace at one end and was half paneled and the low ceiling was beamed, and the stairs went up from the middle of it. The drawing room was long and narrow and had a small conservatory leading off.

There was a breakfast room and a dining room, and a nice kitchen, but only one third the size of the mill kitchen. She walked slowly up the stairs. The landing was as large as a room. There were four bedrooms each with a dressing room. Then up another flight of stairs, and there were four attic bedrooms. She descended to the landing again and stood looking down the stairs into the hall. This is the house she should have been living in for the past seventeen years; this is the house in which she should have brought up her son; she could see him now, standing in the hall looking up at her as he had looked on the day she had met him on the road five years ago, in the spring.

She had felt a sense of uneasiness about that time. She wanted to get out and roam but Matthew didn't like her taking walks; he always suspected her of making her way to the fell and from the fell looking towards the wall that surrounded the Hall. When, in the early days, the girls had wanted to go back to see the dwelling place he had been firm and said no, hadn't they seen enough of the dwelling place? But on this spring day when he had business in Newcastle and had taken Victoria with him, to give her the chance to visit Sarah and Charlotte he had said, but mainly to have Victoria to himself on the drive, she had taken the trap, saying to William she was going into Shields for some odds and ends of silks and a book for Matthew's birthday. She had gone into Shields, but by way of the road that passed the North Lodge;

and when she came to the slope she had stopped and, leaving the trap, had walked slowly up to the dwelling place, or what was left of it. The roof had fallen in because the wooden supports had been ripped away; the floor of the storeroom had been ripped up too. The walls were still standing, and there was the fireplace around which they had huddled for years. And as she stood and stared she was amazed that they had managed to exist in this shanty; more amazed still that her son had been born here.

Saddened, she went down the slope to the trap again. It was when she rounded the bend towards the South Lodge that she noticed two horsemen coming towards her. The road was narrow and she saw the younger rider draw his horse in and follow behind the older one. Then she was abreast of them. She was oblivious to her heart racing because she thought it had stopped; time stood still while her eyes looked into those of Lord Fischel. She wasn't aware that she had drawn the trap to a standstill, but she was aware that he was raising his hat to her, and that the younger man behind him had followed suit. Her eyes rested on the younger man, the youth. He had dark hair, a prominent nose, a wide mouth, and brown eyes. It was only when she urged the horse forward again that she realized she had stopped.

When she reached the turnpike she found her face was wet, and she was sitting with the reins slack in her hand; and the horse had stopped, not knowing which of the four strange roads to take. She walked down the stairs now and into the drawing room and, standing in the middle of it, she looked about her as she thought, I'll have a rose- colored carpet in here and pale green walls and soft gold curtains.

She had made up her mind.

The following day she took Sarah and Charlotte to see the house and asked them how they would like to live there, and they exclaimed, "Oh, our Cissie, you can't mean iti" And when she said she did, adding,

"But of course, that's until you marry," they had both shaken their heads.

Charlotte at twenty-six was well past the marrying age; moreover, she was very plain. Sarah at twenty- seven was comely, but she had given her heart to a young man when she was twenty-two, and three months before the marriage he had died of the cholera. So they were both resigned, and happily so, to spinsterhood, and the thought of living with Cissie again delighted them.

Later, she brought together the boys, as she still thought of them, and when she told them her plans they were silent, Joe because he suddenly realized how much he would miss her being near, William because he was feeling unnecessary guilt, and Jimmy because he had guessed that their Cissie was up to something. And then she had said that William was to come and live at the mill and Joe was to take William's house, also that she was willing the mill, its freehold and business over to them jointly. This left Jimmy where he was and in a much poorer position;

so, to level things out, she was passing on to Jimmy the Newcastle property, and at this Jimmy had exclaimed, "Oh nol No, Cissie." And she had silenced him.

The other property that Matthew had accumulated she was dividing among Mary, Bella, and Annie, but Bella's share, she had added with a tight grin, would be doled out to her weekly. And the tension was broken by their laughing at this.

Incoherent and shy for once, they had pressed around her and kissed her; and Jimmy, the last to leave, had taken her hand and, his voice husky and his eyes misted, he had said, "Oh, our Cissie! Our Cissie.

God surely made you when he made little apples. "

The deep, sincere, and loving compliment brought her to tears, and she pushed at him, saying, "Get yourself away home and ask Ada would she like a new house built away from the shop." And at this he lifted his head and gaped at her and said, "Whati" Then grinning he added, "Now don't you put any ideas into her head; we're all right where we are."

As he was about to go out of the door she called to him softly, and when he came back she said, "You could, you know. Jimmy, build a nice little place, because that property in Newcastle has trebled over the years. It's in the best business part. It's worth nigh on ten thousand pounds."

She smiled as he slowly brought his hand up to his mouth and pressed it hard, and again he said, "Oh, our Cissie."

Everything was settled. She was about to start a new life, and she was free and strangely excited . like a girl about to be married.

She had driven in the gig from "the house" to the city. She was to meet Annie at the "Band Box," do some shopping with her, then bring her back to the house to tea.

She found the city more than unusually crowded that day, and at the top of the Groat Market she decided to make a detour to West gate Road and enter Collingwood Street from there. But when she turned into a side street, which was mostly taken up with large offices, she found a number of carriages drawn up to the kerb, leaving very little room for her passage. And when, about half-way down the street, she saw coming towards her at a good pace a coach and four, she hastily drew her horse into a space between what was obviously a hired coach and one which was more obviously still a private carriage.

At the moment the coach and four was galloping past her there emerged from the doorway opposite the private coach two gentlemen. One was fair and one was dark. The fair man crossing the pavement first glanced to the left of him and to a lady dressed in rose taffeta and wearing a hat of unusual shape and color, it being made of a soft, gauzy, green material, which contrasted strongly with her brown hair.

Cissie, her lower jaw hanging slightly, stared over the distance at the fair man, as he did at her, and her eyes, still seeming to hold his, took in the figure of the young man at his side. They were both of a like height but the contrast in their coloring was sharp. A second before she jerked on the reins she let her gaze fall fully on the younger man, and it was like looking into her own eyes. She brought the horse sharply round and into the clear way again.

He was home! Well, hadn't she guessed he would come home when his father died? It was ten days since she read in the paper of Lord Fischel's death, and four days ago she had been tempted to go to the funeral, at least to view it from a distance because she felt a peculiar sorrow at his passing--he, even more than his son, seemed to have guided her life--but it was the fear of this very encounter that had dissuaded her.

Her life was running smoothly now, without pain . and without pleasure, except for the homely pleasure of the girls' company and the visits from the rest of the family. But she had known for a long time that there was an excitement brewing in her on which she must batten hard down. She kept telling herself that she was a mature woman, not a girl any longer; yet at times she had the fantastic idea that she was but sixteen and life was before her.

When she said to herself, "He looks so much older," she came back harshly with the reply, "He would, wouldn't he?" It was eighteen years since she last saw him, but he looked more than eighteen years older. He looked a man well in his forties, although he was still thin, as thin as when she had first seen him.

She felt slightly sick, and when she reached the shop the girls were concerned for her and made her sniff some smelling salts and drink heavily sugared tea, after which she felt bound to assure them she felt a lot better.

It was the next afternoon that Ellen, the younger of the two maids that she kept, came scampering down to the bottom of the garden where she was with Ronson, the gardener, discussing the making of a new flower bed.

"Madam," gasped the girl, "it's a gentleman. He asked to see you. I I put him in the drawing room."

The reason for Ellen's excitement was that she had been in service in this house for nearly three months and she hadn't answered the door to one visitor, except the family, until just then. And now, what a visitor!

"Is your mistress at home?" he had inquired in the voice of a gentleman. And she knew how gentlemen should speak; she had started in service in a big house, and when she had said, "Yes, Sir," he had replied, "Will you tell her that Lord Fischel would be obliged if she would see him."

Cissie did not need to be told the name of the caller. She couldn't say that she had been waiting for him, nor would she admit that she had been hoping he would come. She could only think to herself in deep agitation. Oh God, let me pass myself when I meet him. If she had been educated in her early days instead of her twenties her thoughts would have suggested, Let me conduct myself with decorum.

She smoothed back her hair, straightened the top layer of her skirt, and wished in an aside that she had put on another petticoat and a more sober looking dress--but now she owned no sober looking dresses.

Although the day was warm she shivered as she entered the house. She paused a moment as she crossed the hall; then gripping the glass knob of the drawing-room door tightly she turned it and entered the room.

He was standing facing the door, his back to the window as if waiting for her, and having closed the door she stood still and they looked at each other down the length of the room.

When he walked towards her she moved. Her step slow, she went to meet him. He did not take her hand or give her any formal greeting. What he said was, "It has been a long time."

She could not answer him, her voice would not obey her. He was handsome in a cold way for his eyes were hard, yet at the same time sad; but his voice was as she remembered it, beautiful-sounding to her ears.

"You have not changed at all."

"Not in eighteen years?" She made her lips smile.

"Won't you sit down?"

With a gesture of his hand he indicated that she should be seated first, then lifting the long tails of his black coat he sat down; and again they looked at each other in silence, until he said, "And so you came here after all."

"Yes, after all." Her lips drooped slightly.

"I'm sorry the mill ... your husband died. When did you lose him?"

"On Christmas Day of '51." She wondered how he had come to know of Matthew's death; likely Mr. Weir had told him.

"It is a pity; he was still a young man. I ..." he bent slightly towards her now and there came a more personal note into his voice, "I hope you were happy."

There was a pause before she lifted her gaze to his again and said, "Yes, I was happy."

"Have you a family?"

"I had one daughter; she died of the typhoid when she was eleven."

"Oh, I am sorry, I am very sorry."

And now she in her turn said, "I was very sorry to hear of His Lordship's death. Had he been ill long?"

"Yes, for some months. When I was informed of this I came straightaway.... I live in Spain now."

"In Spain?" She inclined her head.

"It is a very far country."

"Yes, very far; but very beautiful."

She dared to ask, "Are you returning there?"

"Yes, I am due to sail in ten days' time."

"Oh." Her body felt heavy as if a weight had been tied around her middle. She wanted to ask him if he was returning to his family, to his wife and family, but she couldn't. She could not have asked this question if he had still been Mr. Clive, and so much less could she take the liberty of probing with . Lord Fischel. She said quietly, "Can I offer you some refreshment, a little tea?"

"That would be very nice, thank you."

She rose and rang the bell, and when Ellen appeared she gave her the order. And he watched her the while, hardly believing that this was the same girl he had last seen incongruously sitting on the couch in the Hall drawing room dressed in heavy boots and common coarse clothes; the girl whose hands he had kissed and felt the roughness of the skin against his lips; the girl whom, against all reason, he had loved then, and whose face had continued to haunt him for years. He had lost count of the mistresses he had had since he had left this country, he only remembered that their dismissal had been preceded by bouts of black depression filled with the revived memory of this girl . and Isabelle, both linked and twisted, their presence shrouded like a thick vapor, penetrating his brain and thrusting him back into those three crucial months of his life that had set the pattern for his future.

He had always thought that if she were dressed correctly she would appear like a lady, and this she was proving. Her speech too was different, not refined to insipid ness not refined at all, he would say, but rounded and full of character, as was her face. And how beautiful her face. She said she had been happy with the miller?

In another silence he glanced round the room, then remarked, "It is very tasteful" ; and she inclined her heads towards him and said, "Thank you."

"Did you put it into the hands of a designer?"

"No" --she raised her brows slightly"--it is as I wanted it myself."

The door opened and the two maids entered very flustered, one carrying a silver tea tray, the other a tiered cake stand.

He watched her pouring tea from a silver pot and all the while he marveled.

The conversation continued to be stilted during the drinking of the tea, but when he put his cup down for the last time he drew in a long breath and, leaning against the back of the chair, slowly relaxed his body; then he startled her with his next words.

"What do you think of your son?" he asked.

One could have counted ten full seconds while she stared at him, and then she answered, "He's a fine looking young man."

"So think I." For the first time his face fell into a wide smile.

"And what is more he has grown into a nice person. But I can take no credit for that as I have seen little of him over the years." He paused here before ending, "My father did a good job on him."

She nodded her head twice before she said, "Yes, I am sure he did."

Now he was leaning towards her, one forearm on his knee, his voice low.

"Have you ever regretted your generosity?"

And to this she answered simply, "Yes, many times."

He nodded slowly, then looked down at the floor before saying, "It couldn't have been otherwise; yet I am not sorry you let him go, for he is fitted to the place as I- never was. He will look after it as I never would. You know" --he raised his eyes to hers and smiled gently at her"--he has your nature, warmhearted and kindly."

A flush swept over her body. She lowered her eyes and remained silent as he went on, "He loves the Hall, the land. He will bring up his family there. Oh" --he gave his head a little jerk"--you would not know. He is going to be married."

"Married?" Her eyes were wide as she stared at him, and she experienced a new pain.

"Yes, to what you would call a childhood sweetheart, the granddaughter of my father's friend, David Bellingham. Elizabeth Rymall's her name, the Honorable Miss Elizabeth Rymall." His lips moved up into a crooked smile.

"It's not going to take place for a year yet. I have promised to return for the wedding. In the meantime he will be getting the House ready."

She was still staring at him unblinking while she told herself not to ask the question; yet she had no power to withhold it.

"Does he know about me?" she said.

His answer seemed long in coming; and then it was quiet.

"Yes, he knows about you."

She was looking past him into a void now. Her son had known about her and never made any approach towards her.

"I told him after our recent encounter."

"Oh." Her eyes came back to his face.

"Only ... only then?" Her voice faded away on the then, and he repeated, "Only then."

"May... may I ask what his reaction was?"

"He was very favorably impressed." He did not add, "He was also startled and disturbed." But he continued, "He recalled seeing you some years ago when he was a boy on holiday. He had been under the impression that his mother had died when he was a child and, thinking the subject was painful to my father, did not open it until sometime last year when he overheard two of the servants talking. It was from this conversation that he gauged that his mother, was alive and living in the vicinity. He did not know exactly where, and after some consideration he put the question to my father, and the answer my father gave him was that he was not at liberty to disclose your whereabouts." He paused here and smiled gently before going on.

"He did ask him what kind of a person you were, and part of my father's answer to this was that you were a very worthy woman. Knowing my father and his views of the female sex, I consider that high praise indeed."

She took no notice of his compliment, or a cue from the lightness with which he was touching this delicate subject now. The ache was filling her body again, an ache that she knew could never really be eased, for it had its beginnings in a small hand slapping out at her, and so when he asked softly, "Would you like to meet him?" she rose to her feet, saying quickly, "No, no!" while at the same time her need shouted loud within her, "Don't be a fool. Just once."

"I think you're wise." He was standing now within an arm's length of her, and he put out his hands and caught hers and felt their trembling pass through his body; and, his voice very low, he said, "You were always wise, Cecilia."

Slowly he raised her hands, his lips touched her knuckles lightly, then he relinquished them and, adopting his formal manner again, he said, "I have taken up a great deal of your time."

As always when she was deeply disturbed she could not speak. She turned from him and led the way out of the room, across the hall, and to the front door. He bowed to her.

"Good-bye," he said; "it's been a great pleasure meeting you again."

Still she could not speak. It was as on that day when his father had escorted her to the door of the Hall and her emotions had kept her dumb.

He walked down the two steps and across the gravel drive to where the coachman held open the door for him. She dimly recognized the coachman; it was the one who had called for her the day she took the child back.

After the coach had disappeared round the bend of the drive she still stood at the door. She felt slightly numb now, not herself.

As she walked back across the hall, a great sadness weighing her down, she was attacked by a feeling of guilt akin to horror as she thought.

Oh, how awful! How could I have forgotten? I never thanked him for the house or the money.

She told the girls about the visitor when they came home that evening, because if she hadn't Ellen would have kept dropping hints like bricks. They were equally as impressed as the servants were. Lord Fischel calling on their Cissiel Oh, they knew who Lord Fischel was, all right; they had been brought up with the scandal although they hadn't looked on it as a scandal, more as an honor in being connected with the Hall in any way. Yet they knew it hadn't got to be talked about because Matthew didn't like it. They also knew that it was the reason why Matthew kept such a tight rein on their Cissie, hardly letting her out of his sight. They thought at first that she didn't mind the restriction, but as they grew older in years and wisdom they sensed that she did. And now Mr. dive, who was the father of Richard, and they remembered Richard very well, had called on their Cissie, and he was no longer to be thought of as Mr.

Clive but as Lord Fischel. Yet in Sarah's mind a dim picture was trying to force itself to the surface, it had to do with the first time she had seen their Cissie's distinguished visitor. She clamped hard down on it;

that incident belonged to the far, far past, and the past was best forgotten. Instead, she thought, when this got around the neighborhood the ladies would forget that Mrs. Turnbull's sisters ran a hat shop, and the carriages would be queuing up on them. She voiced this, and Charlotte, laughing, agreed.

Cissie made herself smile tolerantly at them while warning them not to mention anything to the others, and at this they exclaimed highly, "Not even our Jimmy?" And she replied firmly, "Not even our Jim my."

It was His Lordship's first and last visit, so would they forget about it, please.

She went early to bed but not to sleep; it was almost five in the morning when she dozed off, and when the girls came in to say good-bye and reminded her they were all to meet in Newcastle and go to the theatre that night she asked why should she forget? She'd be there.

It was around twelve o'clock when the carriage drew up on the drive and one of the coachmen brought from its interior a large ornamental basket of peaches and another filled with roses, and a letter from His Lordship.

The dull day suddenly became bright; her body lost its weight. She opened the letter and once again read her name written by his hand:

"Dear Cecilia, I will be in the city tomorrow on business; could you tolerate another visit from me? I remain always, your obedient servant, Clive Fischel." That was all.

She almost ran to the desk, took up a pen and a sheet of notepaper, then, pen poised, she stopped. How should she address him? Certainly not "Dear Clive," although he had called her Dear Cecilia, and she couldn't say "Your Lordship." The men were waiting. She wrote in a round copperplate handwriting, "I shall be pleased to see you any time you care to call, Cecilia." She put the letter into an envelope;

and now she could write his name. Lord Fischel, Houghton Hall.

When she handed the letter to Bowmer he stared at her as if unable to believe his eyes, for he was remembering back. " " Kindly give this to His Lordship," she said; and he replied, " Yes, Ma'am. "

He had not said at which hour he would be coming, and when he arrived at one o'clock he apologized immediately for omitting to state a time and hoped he hadn't kept her from any other appointment. And she assured him he hadn't and asked him if he would care for a glass of wine.

It was all very formal, very polite. He sat in a chair at the side of the drawing-room window and she some distance away. He remarked that the garden was looking exceedingly pretty; he also, after observing a quantity of books about the room, asked if she enjoyed reading.

To which she answered, "Very much."

Who were her favorite authors?

Oh, she liked the Barrett-Brownings, and Shelley, and the writings of the sisters Bronte.

He nodded his approval but again remained silent. And in the silence he asked himself the question that had never left his mind since he had entered this room two days before. Could he do it? Should he do it? He wanted to, oh yes, he wanted to, even more so now than he had done years ago. But the same question remained now, as then; was it wise? Seven more days and he'd be gone. The first meeting could have been conclusive. He had paid her his respects, as was due to the mother of his son. He had seen to her comfort, and, although she hadn't availed herself of it until a few months before, that wasn't his fault. It had been there and waiting, and Weir informed him that his allowance to her had now grown into a very comfortable sum, and added to this there would be the miller's portion. She was happily ensconced in this house with her sisters, so why had he to dive into the past in a wild aim at unraveling the threads? What would the unraveling lead to?

Would they accept her as his wife?

He breathed deeply, then gave himself the answer:

Some, mostly the wrong sort, and she would be hurt. She would be cut into little pieces by the ladies' tongues and she wouldn't be able to retaliate; she wasn't that kind of woman, she would suffer in silence.

But what was he thinking of? He wouldn't be staying in England, he had no intention of living in England again. He had adopted Spain, and Spain him; he had a house and friends there, and most of his friends were Spanish. With regard to the English ones, they could take her or leave her. But why should they not take her and be entranced by her, as he was? The only difference between her and them was the inflection in her voice, and once away from those of like inflection it would change. But to hell! What did her voice matter, what was he carping about? Her voice was warm and good to his ears; her presence was stirring, exciting, consuming him, making him weak. It was all he could do now not to rise from his chair and fling himself before her and bury his face in her breasts. But it was madness. Apart from everything else there were the conventions to be considered; his father had been dead only a matter of days. The whole thing was preposterous.

"Have you got a permanent home in Spain?"

Her unnecessary use of the word "got" impinged on his mind, but he thrust it roughly aside and replied, "Yes, I have a rather charming house there."

She stared at him and a little smile crept over her lips as she asked quietly, "Is it a long house, low, all white, quite dazzling when the sun shines on it?"

He raised his brows.

"Yes. Yes, that is a very good description. It is quite dazzling when the sun shines on it; the light is reflected from a rock face to the side of it. People have remarked about this. How strange. Have you seen a picture of such a house?"

She moved her head slowly. The smile had spread from her lips to her eyes; it had lifted her cheeks upwards and she said, almost in a whisper, "Yes. Yes, I have seen a picture of a house like that."

"It is a general type of house in that vicinity, but mine is rather unique in that it is built on a plateau on the hillside and has some magnificent views."

She rose to her feet, saying, "May I fill your glass again?"

"Thank you, it is a very good madeira."

She took his glass to the sideboard and from there she now dared to ask, "Your family ... you left your family there?"

He stared towards her straight back. He could make out the outline of her figure under her clothes. She wasn't indulging in the hideous array of skirts that were at present in vogue. She wanted to know about his family. It was a probing question. It pleased him.

A quirk came to his lips and stretched when his silence turned her sharply about and, her face unsmiling, she held his gaze. But he didn't give her the answer until she handed him the wine, and then he said, "Unfortunately, I have no family except that which is in the Hall."

He was grateful now for the fact that he had never housed his mistresses in the villa. The cautious, even puritanical facet of one side of the Fischel nature, he supposed, had been answerable for this discretion:

and although many a time it had irked him with its inconvenience, he had adhered to it with a strictness he considered his only remaining virtue.

When she resumed her seat she asked, "Have you been left the sea long?"

"During these past six years. Since then I have taken up painting again. I had a tendency towards it in my youth." And what a tendency.

But for raping her he would today have been an artist, a real artist, he was sure of that; but the inherent touch was developing.

And so they talked, he about the life in Spain and she, at his inquiry, of what had happened to each member of her family. And when he took his leave he again kissed her fingers and asked if he would be permitted to enjoy her company in two days' time. And as she granted his wish with an incline of her head, she thought, The day after tomorrow, and four days after that he will be gone.

She was looking for something for Jimmy's birthday and had decided on a good pipe in a case and perhaps a few special cigars. Jimmy, she knew, had never smoked a cigar, but he would be tickled by the gift and she could imagine him amusing the others by striking a pose while puffing at the symbol of the gentry.

Ransome's was the place to go to for cigars. She went into the long male-scented shop where there were a few customers present, all men.

The assistant came and offered her a chair, and when she told him what she required he brought her a number of cases holding pipes, also a selection of cigars. She chose the pipe by the look of it, but the cigars she left to his experience.

He was parceling her purchases for her when a door opened at the far end of the room. She had heard about the special room where the gentlemen could take their ease while testing snuff. She looked towards the door. A small man was holding it wide, one arm extended, his body slightly bowed, and past him walked Clive and her son.

She remained seated as she looked down the room.

Her face was straight and pale. She saw Clive glance at his son, at their son, who was looking at her with an expression in his eyes she couldn't translate.

The assistant was speaking to her and she turned to him. When she next looked down the room it was empty.

She was trembling as she left the shop, and her trembling increased when she saw them confronting her on the pavement.

"Good-day." Clive raised his hat to her, and she answered in a wliisper, "Good-day," all the while keeping her eyes tight on his.

"May I ask if you have a little time to spare?"

"My time is my own." Her voice was still a whisper;

"Would it be possible for us to return to your home? The coach is just at the end of the street."

She paused for some seconds. Her horse and trap were stabled but she could come back for them later.

"Very well," she said.

When he took her elbow and guided her through the crowd on the pavement she didn't turn to see if her son was following; not until she was ushered into the carriage and he took his seat to the side of her was she sure that he was coming with them. She was glad of one thing: he wasn't sitting opposite her, for she would have hated to have sat all through the journey with her head bowed. She could hardly bear to look at Clive, for his face now was cold and stiff and his voice had a similar ring to it as he spoke his only words during the journey: "We'll leave the talking until we get within doors."

No space of time in her previous life, or in the years to come, ever appeared as long as that ride, nor was she ever again to feel more aware of a presence as that of her son sitting stiffly to her side, no part of them touching.

Clive handed her down from the carriage and she led the way into the house. In the hall she stopped for a moment, slipped the cape from her shoulders, and took off her hat and gloves while Ellen relieved the visitors of their hats and gloves. Then they were in the drawing room, and she said with forced calmness, "Please be seated."

But neither took the proffered seats. Clive stood straight and stiff, and his whole attitude, even his voice, was a replica of his father's as he said, "There should be no need for embarrassment, you both know your relationship. Richard, this lady is your mother. Cecilia, your son...."

She was back in the dwelling place. The child was standing in the corner to the side of the fireplace. She was saying coaxingly to him, "Come on, Richard. Come on, that's a good boy, eat your porridge." She was putting her hand out towards him and his came out towards her, but to slap at her.

"Don't want porridge. I don't like you." Yes, he had said that to her.

"I don't like you." She had never admitted the words before; in all the memory she had of him she had blocked that one sentence out of her mind, "I don't like you...."

But now she was looking into these same eyes, and but for the veneer and education that was imprinted on him she felt he was saying these words again, looking at this still strange woman and thinking, I don't like her.

"Well?" Again it was the voice of the old lord speaking, and the young man, after glancing at his father, bowed towards Cissie and said, "I am glad at last to make your acquaintance... Ma'am."

The words were stiff, cold, and empty-sounding. But what could she expect? She was a stranger to him. This must be the most trying moment of his life, the most embarrassing, as it was the most painful for her. Nothing she had experienced before was as painful as this.

But she must carry it off . pass herself, and with decorum; time enough later, all the time in the world, all the rest of her life, for tears. She said with just a slight tremor in her voice, "I am aware that this must be very embarrassing for you. I ... I would like you to understand right away that I'm not aiming to...." She stopped and searched for words, then went on, . "to claim an acquaintanceship with you at this late stage. It... it is not with my wish that you are here now;

although. " Again she paused and stopped herself from adding, " Oh, but I'm glad to see you. " Instead she said, " You are welcome and will be any time, but . but you need not trouble yourself that I will take advantage of this encounter. "

Her son's face was red, his whole attitude appeared slightly shamefaced and she couldn't bear it; for this proved to her what she had known all along, that he hadn't wanted to meet her. His future was set, the pattern of his life was set, he didn't want any unknown mother, and a woman of the people besides, intruding on it, and causing ripples of scandal in the society in which he moved.

Clive had said he was a nice person, and she believed this, but she also knew he was human, and that she was too; and that the longing of her arms to go out and around him was almost unbearable, and in case the desire became uncontrollable and she might put her hand out just to touch him, she said on a lighter tone, "Will you excuse me a moment? I will order some coffee."

She had not asked them if they would like coffee, and Clive did not prevent her from leaving the room, and once the door had closed on her he turned on his son, his face dark with anger, and said under his breath, "You are acting like a boot. She is no one to be scorned."

"I am not scorning her. Father, but... but she is a stranger to me."

The tone was stiff, slightly haughty.

"Then she won't be a stranger to you much longer. I have news for you;

I intend to marry her. "

The young man's mouth dropped open, his brown eyes stretched wide. He looked in this moment like a child who had received a slap across the face for no apparent reason, and he whispered, "Marry her?"

"That is what I said, marry her."

He moved his head slowly from side to side before asking, "You ... you will be taking up residence in the Hall then?"

His father gave a short, hard laugh now, then said, "Don't let that worry you, I'm not going back on my word. The Hall and all it stands for are yours, and welcome. You are my heir, it is your rightful place. You will be relieved to know that I am taking her back to Spain with me." The Fischel in him had settled the matter, even before he knew what her answer would be. He said harshly, "The look of relief on your face doesn't do you any credit."

"I am sorry. Father."

"It would please me if you could force yourself to give her some sign of affection before you leave."

The young man again moved his head slowly, then nipped on his lower lip before he said, "I cannot pretend what I don't feel. I ... I am not made that way, and" --his look was direct now, his voice steady-"it is not my fault that I have a distaste for subterfuge."

Clive stared at his son. The irony of it, that he should have a distaste for subterfuge. He took after her in that way for she couldn't pretend either. The irony of it indeed.

When the door opened and she entered the room Clive turned to her and, his tone light now, he said, "I was just saying to Richard that this is the house in which he should have been brought up, and but for your unselfishness and thought for his future he would have been. Perhaps he would have profited more under your care."

She looked at her son fully now, and as if she were suddenly tired of keeping up a front, she dropped into the idiom of the family as she said, "His Lordship made a better job of you than I would have done; that's plain to be seen. I only had you for a very short time, just over five months. Apart from giving you birth, you belonged to him. Even before you were born you were his, because he'd made up his mind to have you."

She was staring into her son's eyes when he stepped slowly forward and, taking her hand, bowed over it and said, "I thank you, Ma'am, for your courtesy and understanding."

To this she answered flatly, but with a break in her voice, "As long as you're happy that's all I ask, all I've ever asked." Then she withdrew her hand from his and turned gratefully to the door where Ellen was entering with the tray of coffee. Ten minutes later they were in the hall and she was bidding them good-bye; and when her son, again taking her hand, carried it to his lips, it meant nothing. The contact gave her no warmth, no thrill. For her the boy was back in the corner standing near the fireplace, in fact he had never left it, his hand out to her, his voice piping, "I don't like you."

She did not watch the carriage go down the drive, but running swiftly upstairs she threw herself on the bed and, burying her face in the pillow, wept until her body seemed awash with her tears. She wept until Mary and Ellen tapped on the door, then came into the room. She wept so that Ellen put her arms around her and rocked and patted her as if she were a child, saying, "There, Ma'am. There, Ma'am."

And it was many weeks later that she burst out laughing when she recalled, for no apparent reason, Ellen's voice saying as she soothed her, "To hell and damnation with all lordsl"

It was Jimmy's birthday, the first one she had missed seeing him, but she felt she couldn't drive all the way over to the mill. The weeping of the day before had drained her; moreover, her eyes were swollen and it would be evident to anyone who saw her that she had been crying, and for some long time.

The night before, the girls had been indignant that she had been brought to this state, yet they couldn't get anything out of her. It was Ellen and Mary who informed them that it had all happened after His Lordship had left, together with the young man. And this explanation told them all Cissie had withheld.

It being Saturday, and a busy day, Sarah still found time to send word to Jimmy that their Cissie wasn't well and if he had time that night would he look over and perhaps bring Joe and William with him. She wanted cheering up.

The girls didn't dose the shop until ten, yet it was nearly always eleven when they arrived home, and they came by hired coach on Friday and Saturday nights. But it was around eight o'clock, and the twilight deepening, when Cissie heard the coach on the drive and thought.

That's one of them. They had come back early because they were worried over her.

She rose from the couch opposite the glowing fire, for the nights were beginning to get chilly, and went slowly down the room and into the hall, there to see Mary admitting a visitor.

Clive came straight towards her, and he spoke immediately as if he had been running, not driven in a carriage.

"I'm late; I intended returning last evening but was prevented, and I have been very busy today seeing to various things. We're sailing on Monday late, midnight ... will we go in?" He motioned towards the drawing-room door, and, as if coming awake, she drew in a long breath, then turned about. Once inside the room he checked her walk and, taking her by the shoulders, stared into her face. His eyes, roaming over each feature, noted her puffed lids, her trembling lips. He said, "You've been hurt yet again. Every time we meet I inflict pain on you."

She moved her head quickly 'in denial, then let it droop forward but made no answer.

"This time I want, I intend, to make up for all the pain, if that is possible.... Cecilia, look at me. Cecil- ia.... Will you marry me?"

Her head came upwards. Secretly, yet not so secretly, over the past few days she had hoped and prayed for him to say these very words while at the same time she knew the desire, and its result, were utterly preposterous. Now for a second she was completely overwhelmed by the sheer wonder of them, but only for a second before she thrust them from her and him too, as she said bitterly, "As a sort of compensation, to make up for his rejection of me?"

"Nol No!" He flung one arm wide.

"It was my intention to ask you from the first day I entered this house, but it goes back much, much further than that." His voice dropped now and he reached out and took her stiff hand.

"The motive behind buying this house for you was not purely altruistic, for I planned to visit you. I think I told you, didn't I, that when I returned from the voyages I would call. I also planned something else." He did not say truthfully, "To make you my mistress," for there are some truths better left unsaid, but added, "Even then I hoped to marry you."

And the greater part of this was true, for he had seen himself molding her, educating her, making her fit to be the wife of a Fischel, even a first-mate Fischel as he was then.

She forced herself now to voice another thought that had been in her mind over the past few days, a thought that had attacked her hopes with the cutting knife of reality. She said quietly, "I'd never be able to live up to your position. You'd become ashamed of me."

Now he came close to her and caused her whole body to quiver as he took her face tenderly between his hands.

"I'd like to gamble all I've got on the fact that I'll be the envy of every man who meets you."

Her lids drooped.

"I ... I can't talk properly."

"You talk from the heart always, and you use your words well. If your inflection troubles you I can guarantee that you'll lose it within three months. But it pleases me. Anyway, that is a trivial thing, of no importance. But there is a question of importance I would ask you."

He paused here before saying below his breath, "Have you entirely forgiven me for the wrong I did you?"

She could smile now gently at him, and, her voice soft, she said, "It's strange, but from the moment I held him in my arms I never looked upon it as a wrong, but more like a gift."

"Oh, Cecilia!" His arms moved tenderly around her shoulders. She was against his breast for the third time in her life, and when his mouth touched hers the strength drained from her and she leaned heavily against him.

Then the gentleness was swept away under a passion that rocked them both and she felt as she had never felt from any touch or caress of Matthew's, she felt love flowing from her; yet her body remained full of it as if it were being fed from a great rushing river. She seemed to look back down the years to the source from where sprang this flood of feeling and saw that the spring had come into being when she had first fallen to the ground with him.

When it was over they both leaned against each other, and then, their eyes meeting, he laughed and it was the sailor laughing, the young man who had given her back her child laughing. Pulling her forward now almost at a run, he sat her on the couch and, fumbling in his pockets, he brought forth an envelope and a small red velvet box. Tapping the envelope, he said, "Guess what' this is?" And between laughter and tears she said, as she might have done to one of the boys, "You're not buying me a boat now, are you?" And his head went back and he laughed gaily, saying, "But that is an idea." He now pulled open the envelope and drew out a single sheet of thin paper and, putting it into her hands, he said, "It is the deed that is going to bond you to me for life, a special license. We are to be married on Monday morning at ten o'clock at St. Nicholas'. And this" --he now handed her the box"--is the symbol of my whole heart on it."

As she gazed at the ring, a cluster of diamonds and rubies, it was suddenly lost to her vision in the tears that stung her eyes and pressed out from her closed lids.

Holding her gently, he soothed her, and when she brought her head from his shoulder and asked tentatively, "But ... but what will they say, I mean with your ... His Lordship so recently gone?" he answered as the sailor would have done.

"I do not give a damn what they say. In any case we won't hear them. But I know what he would have said. Do you know what he told Richard when the boy asked him about you? He told him that it was the greatest pity I hadn't run off with you in the first place." He looked deeply into her eyes as he finished.

"Richard told me that last night, after we returned home.... I think he would like to see you again before we sail."

When her head dropped and she made no answer, he said on a lighter and teasing note, "What do you intend to call me?"

"Call you?" She puckered her brow.

"You, Cecilia, as yet have never called me by my name; don't you think it's about time you started?"

Her lips went into a smile; her eyes looked at him softly. How often over the years had she said his name? No, not said it, thought it. And so now, for the first time since her delirium, of which she had no real memory except that which Matthew had brought to the fore, she said it aloud, softly, tenderly; and he enfolded her again, and kissed her lips and her eyes and her hair.

Perhaps it was their engrossment in each other that made them deaf to the sounds of lowered voices in the hall, but at last they penetrated to Cissie and, drawing herself from his embrace, she looked at him and whispered, "The boys have come, I think."

"The boys?"

"My brothers. It's Jimmy's birthday, he's thirty- one."

"Well then, we must congratulate him and wish him many more birthdays.

Come. " He drew her hand through his arm, then firmly squeezed her fingers where they lay on his sleeve; and as he walked her with measured steps down the room she realized, and for the first time, that there was a lifetime of learning before her, not least the character of this man who one minute could be the easy-going sailor and the next Lord Fischel. When he was the latter, as now, he was very like his father. How would she like being loved by a man like his father? She would like it. Strangely, she had always pitied his father. It was the loneliness in him that called forth her pity, as it did in Clive. Without being able to think this out she had known, through her senses, the need of both of them.

When he opened the door they stood framed within it, and there before them was her family, or a good part of it. Jimmy, William, and even Joe had come, and they had collected Annie and her husband, and there was also Sarah, but not Charlotte, for she had to stay and see to the shop. But there were six of them, five of them her own, and they were staring at her in amazed silence, until, turning to the man at her side, she said, clearly and firmly, "Clive, these are my brothers and sisters."

Clive Fischel looked at the group before him, respectable upper working-class citizens. He smiled at them frankly and said, "I am pleased to make your acquaintance." Then looking down at Cissie he demanded, somewhat imperiously, "Welll" But she remained mute and the smile she gave him had a slightly mischievous quality about it which he didn't fail to recognize. He turned his gaze upon the staring group again, gave a small cough, and said, "Your sister has done me the honor to promise to become my wife, and I'm afraid my gain will be your loss, for we're sailing for Spain on Monday evening. We are to be married on Monday morning. And" --he finished formally"--I hope you will give us the pleasure of your company at the ceremony."

Jimmy, William, Joe, Sarah, and Annie gaped at the man, the man who had done their Cissie down, the man who had brought misery into her life, but the man who had also been the means of keeping the girls from hunger for years. But now he wasn't just a man, he was a lord. He was Lord Fischel, and their Cissie was going to marry him. Dear God, they thought as one, life was funny, strange. But they were going to lose their Cissie. Things would never be the same without her, nothing would be the same. She was the rope that held them all together. As if all were motivated by the thought of the rope snapping, they surged towards her. Ignoring the man, they crowded round her, drew her from him, exclaiming, "Oh, our Cissie! Our Cissie...."

She was back in the dwelling place. She felt their need. Each one was pulling at her skirts, each one depending on her. Yet, even back there she had known that her love for them was a different love