She smacked so of cities that the few people she met turned round to slowly gape at her, and a couple of small girls coming home from the village shop laughed aloud in her angry face. She walked slowly along the white road, stopping now and then to lift her veil and wipe her burning cheeks. The scenery was beautiful--with the characteristic beauty of the Sussex Weald. But she did not notice: she was too preoccupied. Her own affairs were in a critical state, and when one is anxious there is small consolation in undulating hills, long stretches of pasture, and red-roofed farmhouses. Her attitude was quite cockney--prim regard for her shoes and half-contemptuous admiration of her surroundings predominated. Once she stopped to rest. A thatched and plastered cottage stood empty under the shadow of huge oaks. Wide green glades wound into the very heart of a little wood. The turf, inch-deep in moss, yielded like down. It was irresistible. She threw herself flat on her back, settling her skirt smoothly under her, and looked lazily through the wide mesh of the veil at the sky. The heat and the perfect silence almost made her sleep. A trap went by full of gayly-dressed country girls; a young man, hideous in his Sunday clothes, was driving. They were all off to some festivity, and they looked curiously at the prone figure on the turf. At first they thought it was some tramp, but the thin-soled morocco shoes stuck out from the dusty skirt contradicted that assumption. Such vagrant ways these town folk had! They laughed derisively, and the sound roused her. She sat up and stared a trifle vaguely at the watchful hills, the glades of the wood, the white, winding ribbon of highroad. Then she rose and whisked her skirt and went on again. Only once more was she tempted to stop--at a bramble bush where the blackberries were loose and juicy. She drew up her veil to her nose and drew them off the stalks with widely parted lips, because she was anxious not to soil the fingers of her gloves. It was so necessary to make a good impression: the woman who could always make a good impression had the world at her feet. She crossed a common; fowls were scratching and shaking their wings in the mounds of dust; a long string of geese waddled by, conversing volubly, and with evident arrogance. A man with a timber wagon came toward her, and she stopped him to ask the way. He told her that she had a mile or more to go.