When she had arrived at the conclusion of her journey, the poor child set out half-a-dozen times from the little lighted station which was as an oasis in the desert of darkness, and as many times crept back again to the shelter of the friendly lights. She leant against the paling of the station-master’s cottage opposite the window, where there was protection, and cried. Darkness that she could feel crept and rustled about her; and silence, which she could feel too, penetrated to her very soul. She did not dare to ask the porter who had looked at her so curiously, to go with her. He might kill her on the road, and leave her lying there all covered by the darkness, to be found out when it was too late. Kate cried over this picture of herself. They would all be sorry then; they would be grieved that they had driven her desperate; and there was one that would never, never recover it all his life. Oh that he were only there now with his strong arm to support her--oh John, John, John! And all this time his heart was aching too, thinking she had forsaken him. Where was he? Like herself out somewhere in the night full of despairing thoughts. And here was still this dreadful passage to be crossed before she could even hear of him where he was. At Fanshawe the scene was very different. Mrs Mitford was seated by the lamp, with her basket by her full of things to mend; but her hands had fallen into her lap, and there were signs of agitation in her face. There was a fire burning at the other end of the room, which gave it a different aspect, but she had not yet given up her summer-seat, and the window was open as of old. In the shade behind the lamp, some one was walking up and down--up and down, filling the room with a sense of restlessness and restraint. The two were talking in hushed tones as if something had happened. And not long before, Dr Mitford had flung away out of the room in anger which could scarcely find strong enough expression, “You should have thought of all this sooner. What! leave the bank? Quarrel with your good fortune and all your prospects! No, I have no patience. He has behaved like a fool, and ought to be treated as such,” the Doctor had cried. He was ashamed of his son and of sundry little brags of his own, which John’s fine prospects had called from him; and he did not know how to face the Fanshawes and all the rest of the parish, and allow that John had thrown all his advantages away. He had been struggling, as a weak hot-tempered man is apt to struggle, against the inevitable, that whole day: he had been endeavouring to drive John back to a sense of his duty, to Camelford and the bank. “If you had taken my advice you never would have gone into it,” he cried; “but now that the sacrifice has been made, to draw back! I have no patience with such folly.” John had not said a word in self-defence. He said, “I have been a fool; it is quite true, mother,” when Mrs Mitford tried to defend him: and the day had been wretched enough to