When her visitor had gone Anne sat down by the window to consider the matter. ‘Him an’ his bees!’ was her first contemptuous conclusion, for, as she would have expressed it herself, ‘handsome women they do know their own know about the men.’ Then she thought over the past, with its hard work and scanty pay, over the present, that was swept empty of hope and pleasure, into a future, that had nothing to offer but work, work, work. It was a fixed belief with Anne that men were seldom wholly disinterested in their motives. She could not bring herself to imagine that Meadowes offered her this situation because he wished his work done—no, no, it was because she was ‘so rarely fine-looking,’ that was all. But then what if it proved to be a good situation—good pay, little work?—she would be a fool to refuse it. And further, she was well able to take care of herself. There are moods of mind when only some change in the outward conditions of life can promise hope or comfort. It seemed to Anne impossible that she could stay on here in her old surroundings when everything in the future had changed for her. She was even weak and feminine enough to imagine the delight of Mrs. Nare when she discovered that her prophecies had come true and Anne’s fine lover had proved faithless. This thought recurred to her again and again, for women are curious creatures, and bad as they find it to be jilted, they perhaps find it worse still that other women should be able to marvel and gossip over their deserted state! Said Anne, when this thought had become intolerable, ‘I shall go away to the country; Mrs. Nare shall be none the wiser,’ and with that she decided to accept the offered situation, whatever it might prove to be. So when on the following Sunday afternoon Meadowes appeared once more at Yard’s Entry, he found Anne quite ready to undertake the unknown duties she had hesitated over the week before. ‘I’m happy to go, sir,’ she said; ‘and if so be as I do fail at the work, ’tis your own fault, sir, offering the place to one as knows nought of country ways.’ ‘You will learn—you will learn,’ said Meadowes hastily. ‘And your name, sir? if I may make bold to ask.’ ‘Mr. Richard Sundon; I fancied I had given you my name ere this.’ ‘No, sir, and mayhap you live in the country thereaway?’ It scarcely suited Meadowes to answer this with absolute veracity. ‘No, in town—in rooms just now; some day I shall settle down,’ he replied. ‘O yes, sir, a home’s a fine thing they do say,’ said Anne, in a dreary voice that had the echo of tears in it. CHAPTER III Meadowes did not pay much heed to where he was going as he left Yard’s Entry that Sunday afternoon. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he walked forward without aim or direction. And these thoughts were curiously involved: a horror of what he was about; a determination to persist in it.