What a strange night-walk it was--through the country lanes, all heavy and muddy after the storm, and dark as the darkest midnight; brushing against the rustling, thorny hedges, stumbling over heaps of stones, through the pools at the roadside, and upon the slippery grass; here and there crossing a stile at haphazard, with no guide but instinct; here stealing past a cottage, shrinking from the lamps of the doctor’s gig, which threw a suspicious light upon them. Helen, following, dragging her weary feet through the muddy ways, holding up the long skirts not intended for such usage in her arms, her veil over her face, felt herself shrink, too, when the light flashed upon them. But who could have supposed that it was the master of Fareham and his children that were out there in the muddy lanes? Once at the turnpike, where they were all as well known as the day, her father, whom she always saw before her, a vague, dark shadow with the child in his arms, replied in a gruff feigned voice, with a fictitious country accent, which gave Helen a sharp shock, to the good-night of the gatekeeper. To avoid notice was one thing, to tell a practical lie was another. This, in the midst of her confused wretchedness, gave her a painful prick of sensation. Janey in her excitement had begun to prattle at first, but had been summarily silenced by her father, and now drooped upon his shoulder fast asleep, her face half hidden in the rough collar of his coat. Between the other two not a word passed. Helen was too miserable and too much bewildered to ask any questions; she followed submissively. The little station was within about a mile of Fareham, but a mile is long when trudged through mud and rain by unaccustomed feet, in a gloomy night, and with a heavy heart. A late train going express to town which otherwise would have scorned this little station, had been arranged to stop there for the convenience of the man of business, the well-known Mr Goulburn, whose affairs were on too colossal a scale to be managed by the ordinary means of communication open to everybody. Sometimes he had special parcels to send by the guard: sometimes a clerk who had “run down” for some special directions, or an associate acting with him on some great city board, whose time was too valuable to permit the loss of a moment, took advantage of this train; and sometimes he himself, jumping into a dogcart the moment the latest guest had departed after a sumptuous dinner, had rushed up to town by it. The station-master and the porters were like his own servants, and the whole place all but kept for his convenience. He crept up to it now, keeping carefully in the shadow, out of the glare of its poor paraffin lamps.