The few sticks of furniture were sold to give the old woman a decent burial. Lally was out of money--out of everything. The superintendent of the boys’ school refused to allow her to continue the duties she had performed in the old woman’s name, alleging that she was too young. And as a last blow, she was turned out of her lodgings because of her inability to pay the rent. At this crisis of her history, when as it seemed only death presented an open door to her, she resolved to go down to Wyndham and look once more on her husband’s face. To think, with our desperate Lally, was to act. She set out to walk to Wyndham, working in the hop-fields for sustenance as she went. Thus she did three full days of work before she arrived near her destination, and she had crept into the way-side thicket to rest before continuing her journey to Wyndham, when she chanced to overhear the conversation between Neva Wynde and Rufus Black. Her despair, as she listened to the words of her young husband in declaring his love for Neva, may be imagined. She did not dream how bitterly he had mourned for his lost young wife; she did not dream that she was dearer to him still than Neva could ever be. How could she tell, when listening to his passionate vows of love to Miss Wynde, that the young wife who had slept in his bosom was in his thoughts by day and by night, and was regarded by him as a holy, precious memory? “It’s all over!” she sobbed, pressing her face down upon the dewy turf. “I am forgotten--but why should I not be? I never was his wife. He said so himself in his letter to me that I carry still next my heart. Not his wife--but _she_ will be! How beautiful she is! How lovely her face was, how clear her voice. She would pity me if she knew, but she is an heiress, I dare say, while I am only the poor outcast Rufus has made me! Oh, Rufus, Rufus!” She wailed aloud, but she had learned to bear her griefs in silence, and presently she struggled to her feet and walked in the direction in which the heiress and her lover had gone--the same way by which Lally had recently come. There was no need for her to go to Wyndham now. Her presence there, or her appearance to Rufus, might embarrass his relations to his newer love, and possibly interfere with his marriage. He thought her dead, and had not even come forward to claim the body he supposed to be hers. Ah, yes, she had never been his wife, and she was forgotten. She would never cross his path again. She staggered wearily along the road, in and out of the beaten foot-path, with the twilight deepening around her, and with a deeper twilight settling down upon her heart and brain. She passed the Hawkhurst park, the picturesque stone lodge guarding the great bronze gates, and here she paused.