Richard looked up at the sound of the name. The woman's likeness to Laura was unmistakable; beyond doubt she must be the sister of his betrothed. He examined her curiously. She was perhaps slightly under thirty, of a good height and well set, with a large head and a large, plain face. Her movements were clumsy. She appeared to be just upon the line which divides the matron from the young mother. In both her features and her attire there were faint reminders of girlish grace, or at least of the charm of the shy wife who nurses her first-born. Her complexion was clear and fresh, her ears small and delicately pink, her eyes cool grey. But one did not notice these beauties without careful inspection, while the heavy jaws, the lax eyelids, the flattened nose whose tilt unpleasantly revealed the nostrils, were obvious and repellent. She wore a black gown, which fitted badly, imparting an ungainliness probably foreign to her proper figure. Her broad hat of black straw, trimmed with poppies and corn-flowers, was strikingly modish, and the veil, running at an angle from the extremity of the brim down to her chin, gave to her face a cloistered quality which had its own seductiveness. Her small hands were neatly gloved, and held a cheap, effective parasol. The woman's normal expression was one of cow-like vacancy, but now and then her eyes would light up as she spoke to the child, gently restraining it, reassuring it, rallying it with simple banter. She was still in love with her husband; frequently she glanced at him with furtive wistfulness. She was able to enjoy the summer weather. She was not quite dead to the common phenomena of the roadside. But the last resistances of departing youthfulness and vivacity against the narcotic of a dull, unlovely domesticity were taking place. In a year or two she would be the typical matron of the lower middle-class. When Richard had made these observations, he reflected: "Laura will be like that--soon." Mentally he compared the two faces, and he could, as it were, see Laura's changing.... Then followed a reverie which embraced the whole of his past life. He recognised that, while he bore all the aspect of prosperity, he had failed. Why had nature deprived him of strength of purpose? Why could not he, like other men, bend circumstances to his own ends? He sought for a reason, and he found it in his father, that mysterious, dead transmitter of traits, of whom he knew so little, and on whose name lay a blot of some kind which was hidden from him. He had been born in the shadow, and after a fitful struggle towards emergence, into the shadow he must again retire. Fate was his enemy. Mary had died; Mary would have helped him to be strong. Mr. Aked had died; Mr. Aked's inspiring influence would have incited and guided his efforts. Adeline had abandoned him to a fatal loneliness.