She had been red enough under Molly’s gaze, resenting the confederacy which she could not avoid. But the color left her face as her eyes met her lover’s, and she saw how sad and downcast he looked, and how changed from the Clement of her meetings. He was shabby, too—he who had always been so neat—so that even before he spoke she divined that there was something amiss, and knew at last, too, that there was nothing that she would not do, no risk that she would not run, no anger or storm that she would not face for this man before her. The mother in her awoke, and longed to comfort him and shield him, to give all for him. “Clement!” she cried, and, trembling, she held out her hands to him. “Dear Clement! What is it?” He took her hands and held them; and if he had taken her in his arms she would have forgiven him and clung to him. But he did not. He seemed even to hold her from him. “Forgive me, dear, for sending for you,” he said. “I thought to catch you going into church, but you were not there, and there was nothing for it but this. Jos, I have bad news.” “Bad news?” she exclaimed. “What? Don’t keep me waiting, Clement! What bad news?” “The worst for me,” he said. “For we must part. I have come to say good-bye.” “Good-bye?” Oh, it was impossible! It was not, it could not be that! “What do you mean?” she cried, and her eyes pleaded with him to take it back. “Tell me! You cannot mean that we must part.” “I do,” he said soberly. “Something has happened, dear—something that must divide us. Be brave, and I will tell you.” “You must,” she said. He told his story—rapidly, in clear short phrases which he had rehearsed many times as he covered the seven miles from Aldersbury on this dreary errand. He told her all, that which no one else must know, that which she must not reveal. They expected a run on the bank. They were sure, indeed, that a run must come, and though the issue was not yet quite certain, though his father still had hope, he had, himself, no hope. Within a week he would be a poor man, little better than a beggar, dependent on his own exertions; with no single claim, no possible pretensions to her hand, no ground on which he could appeal to her father. It must be at an end between them, and he preferred to let her know now rather than to wait until the blow had fallen. He thought himself bound in honor to release her while he still had some footing, some show of equality with her. She smiled when she had heard him out. She smiled in his face. “But if I will not be released?” she said. And then, before he could answer her, she bade him tell her more. What was this run? What did it mean? She did not understand.