When Ada was out in the street she felt very weak and very strange, but she looked at a clock which stood over a public building, nearly opposite her father’s house. The hands pointed to eight; and then she remembered vaguely that Miss Askam had said nine; she must not go before nine. She would take a little walk then, in the early freshness; she could not go back to that dreadful room. Besides, she had advanced a little up the town, into the square: there were Miss Askam’s blinds still down; it would not do to go there yet, though she longed to do so, and, had she been in her right mind, would have knocked without further ado, confident in the generous charity of the other woman. So she wandered on, out of the town, faint and feeble for want of food and rest; crazy, and growing every moment more so, with woe, and fear, and wretchedness. Soon she was on a lonely road, stretching out to the north-east, with few houses, and, at that hour, scarcely a person on it. How beautiful it all was, in this golden morning sunshine, with the mists rising from the river, and the trees, clad in yellow and scarlet and russet, heavy and drooping in the windless air of a frosty October morning, precursor of a glorious autumn day! Then she emerged from the shade of these trees, and found herself upon a wild upland road, with sweeps of country stretching far and wide around her; fields of yellow stubble, pastures, meadows; stretches of heavy wood; here and there the gleam of the river, and on every side, the wall of blue fells in the distance. The rough, uphill road lay before her, with scarce a house to be seen; and overhead a blue sky, from which fleecy white clouds were everywhere rolling back to show the fathomless, serene expanse. ‘Ay, but I’m so tired, so tired!’ Ada sighed, as she stumbled, and then recovered herself. ‘This is not being a lady; why does he not come home? If I had the carriage he promised me,—he said he would drive to Balder Hall with me, to see Miss Wynter, and show her what he thought of me, when we were married.’ Here she found herself opposite to a tiny house at the roadside, or rather, at a corner where four roads met; and at its door a woman stood, saw her, called out to her, and wished her good day. ‘Good day!’ said Ada, with a sudden affectation of her old mincing manner. ‘Might I beg a drink of water from you?’