IT was almost noon on the day before Talgwynne fair when Catherine Dennis opened her eyes; she tried to sit up, but her head ached so unpleasantly that she sank back at once and lay still. Her body and limbs were so stiff that it was a torment to move, and when Susannah came in and offered her food she could scarcely eat, though she had tasted nothing for the last eighteen hours. When her own resolve to escape returned to her mind, she knew herself to be, for the time being at least, quite incapable of carrying it out. The milk, with a plate of bread, had been left on the floor beside her mattress, and she forced herself to eat and drink, knowing that she must collect what strength she could muster if her feet were to carry her away from the cottage and out of Talgwynne. To go to-day was out of the question, but she determined to take any chance she could get of slipping off unnoticed on the morrow. She had no plans beyond her settled desire to turn her back on her own humiliation and on Susannah, who had brought it home to her. She would hide herself wherever she could, or tramp the roads as a beggar sooner than be obliged to accept the grudging hospitality of Heber's cousin. The idea of waiting under those scornful eyes for the man who might never come was worse than destitution--worse than the workhouse. As the day wore on and she was able to get up and sit by the fireside at old Moorhouse's invitation, she formed a vague scheme of crossing the Wye and trying for shelter and employment in one of the villages over the Radnorshire border. She could get no speech of the old man, for Susannah was never out of the kitchen and would hear every word she said to him, every question she put. There was a faded glimmer of amusement in his look, too, as it rested on her--his son's dupe. She was more and more certain of her own part. Her only wish was never again to meet any one she had known; but the first problem of escape was beset with such great difficulty that she could hardly see beyond it. She knew that Susannah would let her go willingly, but she wished nobody to know so much as the direction of her own road to oblivion. Black Heber had forsaken her, but it was just possible that Saunders might be upon her track. She had not a tear for Saunders, though even now, amid the stress of mortified pain, her heart swelled as she thought of the shepherd. Perhaps--perhaps he loved her yet, in spite of all Susannah had said. Her eyes filled. But she could not risk it and wait; her pride, once roused, had scourged her so cruelly that it had terrified her into slavery.