“I will pay them.” She opened her purse and counted out the few silver coins left in it. “I must remain a sixpence in your debt; this is all the change I have for the moment.” She put her empty purse down on the table, and knew that she had not a penny left in the world. For a moment she was silent; she looked puzzled, as if she were doing a mental sum. Then she looked up. “Jane,” she said, “you can take the remains of the chicken and the sole to your mother, and anything else that was left from dinner. I shall not require it.” She dreaded seeing the things that Alfred Wimple had touched. She felt that, even down to the smallest detail, she must rid herself of all that had had to do with her life of shame and disgrace, and there was not much time left her in which to do it. She must begin at once: when she had made her life clean and spotless again she would look up and meet death unabashed. “I am ready, ma’am,” Jane said presently, and looked in, with her basket on her arm. Aunt Anne got up and followed her to the back door, in order to see that it was made fast. She shook with fear when she beheld the night. Under that sky and through the darkness Alfred Wimple was making his way to Liphook. The very air seemed to have pollution in it. She retreated thankfully to the covering of the cottage; but the stillness appalled her, once she was wholly alone in it. She stood in the hall for a moment and listened: there was not a sound. She waited for a moment at the foot of the stairs and remembered Alfred’s room above, from which every trace of him had been removed, but she had not courage to mount the stairs. She went back into the little drawing-room and shut the door, and taking up her empty purse from beside the candlestick put it into her pocket. As in the morning, her hand touched something that should not be there; but she knew what it was this time, and pulled it out quickly. It was the blue tie that she had kissed in the train. With almost a cry of horror, as if it were a deadly snake, she threw it on the fire and held it down with the poker, as William Rammage had held down his burning will. As she did so her eyes caught the wedding-ring on her left hand; in a moment she had pulled it off her trembling finger and put it in the fire too. The flame blazed and smouldered and died away, and her excitement with it. But she had not strength to rise from the floor on which she had been kneeling; she pulled the cushion down from the back of the easy-chair, and sank, a miserable heap, upon the rug. [Illustration] [Illustration] CHAPTER IX. During the days that followed she was shut up in the cottage alone; and no one entered save Jane Mitchell, who came in the morning to light the fire while the remnant of coal lasted, and then was sent away.