She fastened her skirt high with an old silk cord and took her umbrella.
Remembering that she had not covered the fire, and that it would have
burnt away before she returned, she took a bucket out to the coal-house.
The wet dross hissed and smoked as she covered the fire. She drew out
the damper to heat the water, turned back the rag hearthrug lest a
cinder should fall on it in her absence, and once more taking her
umbrella, and lifting the key from its nail on the cupboard door, went
out into the rain. She locked the door on the outside, and hid the big
key on the ledge of the manger in the shippon. Then she was outside in
the steady rain, on the gritty turnpike road washed clean to the stones.
As she set off, it was a small relief to her that she would not be
noticed, unless when she passed the cottages, because there were few
workers in the fields, and none who could help it out of doors.

It was a walk of five miles which was before her, and soon the sinking
of heart with which she had set out, began to disappear before the
necessity of setting one foot before the other in a steady walk. The
irritating pain of rheumatism began, too, to vex her and distract her
thoughts. It was not a very familiar country to her after she had passed
the Ashley high road. There were fewer houses. The farms were larger,
and portions of an old forest remained here and there uncut. But there
was no variation in the gloom of the sky or the folding curtain of rain.
She grew tired and hot, and a little breathless, and as again the
dryness of her throat and tightness of her lips reminded her of the
humiliation of her unsought and unaided errand, she saw before her about
a quarter of a mile on the high road which led to Marwell, the new red
brick house with stucco ornaments, built by the horse-breeder, Burton.
She went towards it with lagging feet.

It was a prosperous and vulgar building, with a beautiful garden, for