Thomas Godolphin might have been all the better for a little sun then--not speaking figuratively. I mean the good sun that illumines our daily world; that would be illumining my pen and paper at this moment, but for an envious fog, which obscures everything but itself. The moon was not shining as it had shone the last night he left Lady Sarah's, when he had left his farewell kiss--oh that he could have known it was the last!--on the gentle lips of Ethel. There was no moon yet; the stars were not showing themselves, for a black cloud enveloped the skies like a pall, fitting accompaniment to his blasted hopes; and his path altogether was dark. Little wonder then, that Thomas Godolphin all but fell over some dark object, crouching in his way: he could only save himself by springing back. By dint of peering, he discovered it to be a woman. She was seated on the bare earth; her hands clasped under her knees, which were raised almost level with her chin which rested on them, and was swaying herself backwards and forwards as one does in grief; as Lady Sarah Grame had done not long before. "Why do you sit here?" cried Thomas Godolphin. "I nearly fell over you." "Little matter if ye'd fell over me and killed me," was the woman's response, given without raising her head, or making any change in her position. "'Twould only have been one less in an awful cold world, as seems made for nothing but trouble. If the one half of us was out of it, there'd be room perhaps for them as was left." "Is it Mrs. Bond?" asked Thomas Godolphin, as he caught a glimpse of her features. "Didn't you know me, sir? I know'd you by the voice as soon as you spoke. You have got trouble too, I hear. The world's full of nothing else. Why does it come?" "Get up," said Thomas Godolphin. "Why do you sit there? Why are you here at all at this hour of the night?" "It's where I'm going to stop till morning," returned the woman, sullenly. "There shall be no getting up for me." "What is the matter with you?" he resumed. "Trouble," she shortly answered. "I've been toiling up to the work'us, asking for a loaf, or a bit o' money: anything they'd give to me, just to keep body and soul together for my children. They turned me back again. They'll give me nothing. I may go into the union with the children if I will, but not a stiver of help'll they afford me out of it. Me, with a corpse in the house, and a bare cubbort." "A corpse!" involuntarily repeated Thomas Godolphin. "Who is dead!" "John." Curtly as the word was spoken, the tone yet betrayed its own pain. This John, the eldest son of the Bonds, had been attacked with the fever at the same time as the father and brother. They had succumbed to it: this one had recovered: or, at least, had appeared to be recovering. "I thought John was getting better," observed Thomas Godolphin. "He might ha' got better, if he'd had things to make him better! Wine and meat, and all the rest of it. He hadn't got 'em; and he's dead."