She paused forlornly. In the strong June light, all the lost youth in the small face, its premature withering and coarsening, the traces of rouge and powder, the naturally straight hair tormented into ugly waves, came cruelly into sight. So, too, did the holes in the dirty white gloves, and some rents in the draggled but elaborate dress. Marcia could not help noticing and wondering. The wife of John Betts could not be so very poor! Suddenly her unwelcome visitor looked up. "Miss Coryston!--if they take John's farm away, everything that he cares for, everything that he's built up all these years, because of me, I'll kill myself! You tell Mr. Newbury that!" The little shabby creature had in a moment dropped her shabbiness. Her slight frame stiffened as she sat; the passion in the blue eyes which sought Marcia's was sincere and threatening. Marcia, startled, could only say again in a vaguely troubled voice: "I am sure nobody wants to harm Mr. Betts, and indeed, indeed, you oughtn't to talk to me like this, Mrs. Betts. I am very sorry for you, but I can't do anything. I would be most improper if I tried to interfere." "Why?" cried Mrs. Betts, indignantly. "Aren't women in this world to help each other? I know that Lord Coryston has spoken to you and that he means to speak to you. Surely, surely Mr. Newbury will listen to you!--and Lord William will listen to Mr. Edward. You know what they want? Oh, it's too cruel!" She wrung her hands in despair. "They say if we'll separate, if he promises--that I shall be no more his wife--but just a friend henceforward--if we meet a few times in the year, like ordinary friends--then John may keep his farm. And they want me to go and live near a Sisterhood and work for the Sisters--and send the boy to school. Just think what that looks like to me! John and I have found each other after all these years. I have got some one to help me, at last, to make me a better woman"--sobs rose again in the speaker's throat--"some one to love me--and now I must part from him--or else his life will be ruined! You know, Miss Coryston, there's no other place in England like John's place. He's been trying experiments there for years and years with new seeds, and made soils--and all sorts of ways of growing fruit--oh, I don't understand much about it--I'm not clever--but I know he could never do the same things anywhere else--not unless you gave him another life. He'll do it--he'll go--for my sake. But it'll break his heart. And why _should_ he go? What's the reason--the _justice_ of it?" [Illustration: "I DO WISH I COULD HELP YOU"] Mrs. Betts rose, and with her hands on her sides and the tears on her cheeks she bent over Marcia, gasping, in a kind of frenzy. There was no acting now. The girl of twenty-two was deeply, painfully moved. She put out her hands gently, and drew Mrs. Betts down again to the sofa beside her.