behind them. Her eyes topped them. The whole lower world, the roofs of
the station, the railway line, the sands beyond, lay clear before her in
the moon.

Then her nerve gave way. She laid her head against the stones of the
engine-house and sobbed. All her self-command, her cool clearness, was
gone. The shock of disappointment, the terrors of this sudden loneliness,
the nightmare of her stumbling flight coming upon a nature already
shaken, and powers already lowered, had worked with miserable effect. She
felt degraded by her own fears. But the one fear at the root of all, that
included and generated the rest, held her in so crippling, so torturing a
vice, that do what she would, she could not fight herself--could only
weep--and weep.

And yet supposing she had walked over the sands with her cousin, would
anybody have thought so ill of her--would Hubert himself have dared to
offer her any disrespect?

Then again, why not go to the inn? Could she not easily have found a
woman on whom to throw herself, who would have befriended her?

Or why not have tried to get a carriage? Fifteen miles to
Marsland--eighteen to Bannisdale. Even in this small place, and at
midnight, the promise of money enough would probably have found her a fly
and a driver.

But these thoughts only rose to be shuddered away. All her rational being
was for the moment clouded. The presence of her cousin had suddenly
aroused in her so strong a disgust, so hot a misery, that flight from him
was all she thought of. On the sands, at the inn, in a carriage, he would