"Be sure to hurry back," were her last words as she rumbled off; and when, in looking over her shoulder at the first curve, she saw Lila lift her beaming eyes to Jim Weatherby's face, the protest of all the dust in the old graveyard was in the groan that hovered on her lips. She herself would have crucified her happiness with her own loyal hands rather than have dishonoured by so much as an unspoken hope the high excellences inscribed upon the tombstones of those mouldered dead. In her shabby black dress, with her heavy bundle under her arm, she passed, a lonely, pathetic figure, through the streets of the little town. The strange smells fretted her, the hot bricks tired her feet, and the jarring noises confused her hazy ideas of direction. On the steps of the old church, where she ate her lunch, she found a garrulous blind beggar with whom she divided her slender meal of bacon and cornbread. After a moment's hesitation, she bought a couple of bananas for a few cents from a fruit-stand at the corner, and coming back, gave the larger one to the beggar who sat complaining in the sun. Then, withdrawing to a conventional distance in the shadow of the steeple, she waited patiently for the slow hours to wear away. Not until the long shadow pointed straight from west to east did the ancient vehicle rattle down the street and the driver pull up for her at the old church steps. Then it was that with her first sigh of relief she awoke to the realisation that through all the trying day her heaviest burden was the memory of Lila's morning look into the face of the man whose father had been a common labourer at Blake Hall. Three hours later, when, pale and exhausted, with an aching head, she found the stage halting beneath the blasted pine, her pleasantest impression was of Christopher standing in the yellow afterglow beside the old spring wagon. The driver spoke to him, and then, as the horses stopped, turned to toss the weather-beaten mail-bag to the porch of the country store, where a group of men were lounging. Among them Cynthia saw the figure of a girl in a riding habit, who, as the stage halted, gathered up her long black skirt and ran hastily to the roadside to speak to some one who remained still seated in the vehicle.