The morning had passed by in dizzy haste. There had been much to do, and do quickly, so that her grandfather should not be disturbed by even knowing of the tragedy. This was the more easy of compass, seeing that since his last seizure he had not been coming downstairs till late. So, ere he appeared, there had been time for folk to come and go, time even for old Adam to rake over the gravel disturbed by so many feet. There was no trace, in fact, of what had happened when Aura passed by the spot on her way to the hills. Parkinson's persistent hysterics had been the most troublesome factor in the problem of concealment, but Martha had at last, losing patience, locked her away in one of the cottage bedrooms, and left her there with the callous remark, "She'll come round by herself, and if she don't, 'oo cares?" Who, indeed, did care about anything? Martha and Adam went about their work as usual; her grandfather knew nothing; even Ted was away. Aura felt terribly lonely for the first time in her life; the more so because it seemed to her as if part of her very self had rebelled against that other self which, for one-and-twenty years, had lived such a frank, clear life. For all those years she had carried no burden; but now Love and Death claimed to come with her. She could not separate them even in her thoughts. One seemed to her destruction of the body, the other destruction of the mind. So when leisure became hers at last she took up the thread of life where it had been broken by the intrusion into it of Gwen's death, and started to climb the hills, as she would have done at dawn. It was her natural instinct always. Other girls might shut themselves up in their rooms to think, might sit with their feet on the fender and dream. She had to go out, to feel the fresh breeze on her face, before her mind would work at all. As she sat on the rocky sheep shelter, whither her feet had taken her almost unconsciously, since it was her favourite outlook, the winter sun beat down on her fiercely, warming her through to the heart. She could feel her very veins pulsing; their rhythm seemed almost to sing in her ears. How warm it was! but in the shadows behind the big boulders--ay! and in the tiny shade of each blade of grass, each twig of bracken, the frost still lingered white, for the air was freeezing. Sunshine and frost! Fire and ice! That was exactly what she felt like herself! She was half fire, half ice; for a fierce virginity of mind fought desperately against the intrusion of that glad new impulse of self-surrender she had felt when she saw Ned's iris. That, she supposed, was Love; but what was that sort of love worth if it brought death with it to--to herself--to her mind? She felt indescribably smirched and stained. As she glanced at the fresh white serge skirt she was wearing she seemed to see on it still that crimson blood. It was horrible! It would be there always for her, scarlet as sin, no matter how white as wool it seemed to others.