So after a solitary lunch (a sausage left cold from breakfast and a pot of tea) Winnie started on a solitary expedition. She took the train from Baron's Court to Hyde Park Corner, with the idea of enjoying the "autumn tints" along by Rotten Row and the Serpentine. But, as she walked, her thoughts were not so much on autumn tints as on Woburn Square--on that family so nearly related to her life, yet so unspeakably remote, to whom she was worse than a menace--she was a present and active curse--who to her were something wrong-headed, almost ridiculous, yet intensely formidable--really the concrete embodiment of all she had to struggle against, the thing through which the great world would most probably hit at her, wound her, and kill her if it could. And both the family and Winnie thought themselves so absolutely, so demonstrably, right! Right or wrong, she knew very well, as she walked on towards the Serpentine, that now--this instant--in Woburn Square they were trying to get her man away from her; to make him ashamed of her (he had sworn never to be), to make him throw her over, to leave her stranded, to the ridicule and ruin of her experiment. With a sudden catch in the breath she added, "And the breaking of my heart!" Just as she came near to the lake she saw--among the walkers who had till now seemed insubstantial shades to her preoccupied mind--a familiar figure, Hobart Gaynor! Her heart leapt in sudden joy; here was an old, a sympathetic friend, the man who understood why she had done what she had. But Hobart Gaynor was not alone. His radiant and self-satisfied demeanour was justified by the fair comeliness of the girl who walked beside him--his bride, wedded to him a month ago, Cicely Marshfield. Winnie had sent him congratulations, good wishes, and a present; all of which had been cordially acknowledged in a letter written three days before the wedding. The ceremony had taken place in the country, and quietly (because of an aunt's death); no question had arisen as to who was or was not to be asked to attend it.