and her farmer's wife came only in the mornings, to make the young man's
bed and prepare his coffee. Beside that lamp he was doubtless sitting at
this moment. To know the truth Charity had only to walk half the length
of the village, and knock at the lighted window. She hesitated a minute
or two longer, and then turned toward Miss Hatchard's.

She walked quickly, straining her eyes to detect anyone who might be
coming along the street; and before reaching the Frys' she crossed over
to avoid the light from their window. Whenever she was unhappy she
felt herself at bay against a pitiless world, and a kind of animal
secretiveness possessed her. But the street was empty, and she passed
unnoticed through the gate and up the path to the house. Its white front
glimmered indistinctly through the trees, showing only one oblong of
light on the lower floor. She had supposed that the lamp was in Miss
Hatchard's sitting-room; but she now saw that it shone through a window
at the farther corner of the house. She did not know the room to which
this window belonged, and she paused under the trees, checked by a sense
of strangeness. Then she moved on, treading softly on the short grass,
and keeping so close to the house that whoever was in the room, even if
roused by her approach, would not be able to see her.

The window opened on a narrow verandah with a trellised arch. She leaned
close to the trellis, and parting the sprays of clematis that covered it
looked into a corner of the room. She saw the foot of a mahogany bed,
an engraving on the wall, a wash-stand on which a towel had been tossed,
and one end of the green-covered table which held the lamp. Half of
the lampshade projected into her field of vision, and just under it two
smooth sunburnt hands, one holding a pencil and the other a ruler, were
moving to and fro over a drawing-board.