He did not speak, but left the house, and during his short journey to the station he felt–it was a degrading feeling, no doubt–but he, Jerome Wellfield, who, six months ago, had been as proud, as fastidious, and as exclusive a young man as any one of them that trod this earth, crouched morally at that moment, like a whipped hound. He was conscious of a cowardly longing to make Avice and Nita known to one another as speedily as possible. He had an intuitive conviction that Nita’s charm would soon win Avice’s heart, and then his mistress’s purity and sweetness would stand between him and his sister’s tongue. It was a delightful, an elevating, a soul-inspiring position, and he enjoyed it to the full. Avice, left behind, broke down, burst into a passion of tears, and, engrossed in her sorrow, was surprised by Ellen, who was going away. To her she gave the broken messages which Ellen had repeated to her mistress. She was in too sore distress to go with Mrs. Nelson to the station; but parted from her with more floods of tears, and cried long after she had gone, till she had a headache, and everything looked blurred and dim before her eyes, and while she was in this condition some one knocked at the door, and on the servant opening it, Avice heard a soft, gentle voice ask if Miss Wellfield was at home, and the answer in the affirmative of the country servant, who would have said the same thing had Avice been fainting, or raving in a delirium. No escape was possible, for the front-door of the old house opened, as has been said, straight into the irregular-shaped, raftered parlour. She gazed earnestly at the figure of the girl who now entered, with a great dun-coloured mastiff at her side, whose demeanour proclaimed him an inseparable companion. She saw a slight, pretty figure in a large sealskin paletot and a shady velvet hat with a large black feather drooping round the brim, and soft-hued brown velvet dress. Compared with the splendid beauty and queenly presence of that other woman this was an insignificant apparition enough, but Avice’s eye and heart instantly appreciated the charm of the sympathetic eyes, the mobile face, and gentle manner. Nita came forward, looking like anything rather than a rich heiress who had just triumphantly bought away by her gold the allegiance of another woman’s lover–which was the character in which Avice had pictured her to herself: it was she who was blushing and embarrassed, and who said, almost timidly: ‘I could not wait till afternoon to see you; and I did not like Jerome to bring you up to the Abbey to me, as if I were some one so dreadfully grand. I thought we could get on better without him’–she smiled–‘and I hope you don’t mind my having come.’