was a burning afternoon.

William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of
the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very
rational resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.

They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed,
her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.

She went into the house without speaking or looking at William.
William was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood
disconsolately by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for
her and George. Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan
coming back along the passage. "She has left something in the cart,"
thought he, and he began to look in the straw.

She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William,
and it appeared that was what she had come back for.

William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment. At this
Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own
room.

What she suffered in that room the first month after George's
departure I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will
not. There is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too
familiarly in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare
sometimes these beatings of the bared heart. It will be enough if I
indicate by-and-by her state, after time and religion and good habits
had begun to struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against