Mabin had not gone twenty yards, however, on her way up the slight ascent, when she saw something which diverted her thoughts from the Vicarage people. The gates at “The Towers” were wide open, and Mrs. Dale’s smart victoria, with its well-matched pair of small, dark-brown horses, came out so suddenly that Mabin had to jump off her bicycle to avoid a collision. Alone in the carriage sat a lady in deep mourning, who turned and looked out anxiously at the girl, and stopped the carriage to speak to her. “I’m so sorry! I hope you didn’t hurt yourself, in having to jump off so quickly?” asked the lady in black, in a sweet, plaintive voice that struck some chord in Mabin’s heart, and made the girl gasp, and pause before she could answer. “Oh no, oh no, thank you. One often has to do that,” stammered the girl, flushing, and speaking with a shy constraint which made her tone cold and almost rude. And she knew it, poor child, and was miserable over it; miserable to think that now when she had an opportunity of speaking to the being who had excited in her an enthusiastic admiration, she was throwing her chance away. A common and a most tragic experience with most young girls. One thing, however, Mabin was able to do. In the shy look with which she returned Mrs. Dale’s kind gaze of inquiry, she took in a picture of a lovely woman which remained impressed on her mind ineffaceably. Mrs. Dale was a lovely woman, lovelier than Mabin had thought when she only got glimpses of the lady’s profile from her seat in church, or peeps at her through a thick black veil. Mrs. Dale wore a black veil to-day, but in the open carriage, in the full glare of the sun, her beauty was evident enough. A little woman, plump, pink, childlike in face and figure, with wavy fair hair, infantine blue eyes, and a red-lipped mouth which was all the more lovable, more attractive for not being on the strict lines of beauty, Mrs. Dale had, so Mabin felt, exactly the right features and the right expression for the sweet voice she had just heard. And through the beauty, and through the voice, the girl, inspired perhaps by the mourning dress, thought she detected a sadness which seemed to her the most pathetic thing in the world. In two moments the interview was over; Mrs. Dale had smiled upon her sweetly, bidden her farewell merely with a bend of her head, and driven away, leaving Mabin to scold herself for her idiocy in throwing away an opportunity which she might never have again. She did not try to overtake the carriage; she watched it down the open road, until the shining coil of silky fair hair under the black crape bonnet grew dim in the distance. And then, with a shrug of her shoulders and a murmur that “it was just like her,” Mabin turned defiantly into the road which led past the Vicarage.