CHAPTER X


The stirring of anger at Richard Burton's callousness gave way almost at
once to a feeling of fatigue and defeat as she started on her return
home, and a persistent image of Jane, a little girl playing
skipping-ropes in red stockings, kept coming before her eyes. One or two
gigs passed her, splashing among the pools of the road. The birds began
to sing with a clarity as sweet as that of the purified air. There was
still a tinkling of running water from every side, but the clouds were
in shreds, and patches of blue sky were uncovered here and there.

Three-quarters of the way to her home she passed a fair sized cottage,
in front of which a tall grey-haired woman was sweeping the standing
water from the path with a yard brush. She stopped brushing as she heard
footsteps and looked over the gate.

"Why, it's Miss Hilton," she exclaimed. "What a wet walk you've had.
Come in and stop a bit before you go further," she said, with the
eagerness of an active, talkative woman, who had seen no one to speak to
all day. She took the drenched umbrella and set it on its end in the
doorway, and Anne, tired, hot, and discouraged, sat down gladly on the
chair she offered her.

It was a comfortable kitchen, full of furniture, and bearing evident
signs of men in the house. There were hats hanging behind the door and
two guns over the fireplace. Such furniture as was placed there must