“Oh, but I am going back at once, as soon as you have read this,” said Claire, putting a little note fastened up into a cocked hat like a lady’s, into his unwilling hand. “And perhaps Christian would see me as far as the town, if you think I ought not to go alone.” But this suggestion evidently met with no approval from Mr. Cornthwaite, who shook his head, signed to Bram to remain in the room and began to read the note, all at the same time. “My dear,” said he shortly, as he finished reading and crumpled it up, “Christian is engaged at present. But young Elshaw here will show you into your tram, won’t you, Elshaw?” “Certainly, sir.” Bram, who had the handle of the door in his hand, saluted his employer, and retreated into the hall before Claire, who had not recognized him in his best clothes, had time to look at him again. “A most respectable young fellow, my dear, though a little rough. One of my clerks,” Bram heard Mr. Cornthwaite explain rapidly to Miss Biron as he shut himself out into the hall and waited. Bram was divided between delight that he was to have the precious privilege of accompanying Miss Biron on her journey home, and a sense of humiliation caused by the shrewd suspicion that she would not like this arrangement. But when a few minutes later Claire came out of the library all his thoughts were turned to compassion for the poor girl, who had evidently received a heavy blow, and who had difficulty in keeping back her tears. She dashed past him out of the house, and he followed at a distance, perceiving that she had forgotten him, and that his duty would be limited to seeing without her knowledge that she got safely home. So when she got into a tram car at the bottom of the hill outside the park he got on the top. When she got out at St. Paul’s Church, and darted away through the crowded streets in the direction of the Corn Exchange, he followed. Treading through the crowds of people who filled the roadway as well as the pavement, she fled along at such a pace that Bram had difficulty in keeping her little figure in view. She drew away at last from the heart of the town, and began the ascent of one of the stony streets, lined with squalid, cold-looking cottages, that fringe the smoke-wreathed city on its north-eastern side. Bram followed. Once out of the town, and still going upwards, Claire Biron fled like a hare up a steep lane, turned sharply to the left, and plunged into a narrow passage, with a broken stone wall on each side, which ran between two open fields. This passage gave place to a rough footpath, and at this point the girl stood still, her gaze arrested by a strange sight on the higher ground on the right. It was dark by this time, and the outline of the hill above, broken by a few cottages, a solitary tall chimney at the mouth of a disused coal pit, and a group of irregular farm buildings, was soft and blurred.