newspapers, she had sometimes timidly envied the heroines of the matrimonial court who had bought romance at the price of esteem and of peace.  Then suddenly the whole matter slipped into unreality, and she could not credit it.  Was it possible that she, a respectable matron, a known figure, the mother of adult daughters, had fallen in love with a man not her husband, had had a secret interview with her lover, and was anticipating, not a retreat, but an advance?  And she thought, as every honest woman has thought in like case:  ’This may happen to others; one hears of it, one reads about it; but surely it cannot have happened to me!’ And when she had admitted that it had in fact happened to her, and had perceived with a kind of shock that the heroines of the matrimonial court were real persons, everyday creatures of flesh-and-blood, she thought, again like the rest:  ’Ah!  But my affair is different from all the others.  There is something in it, something indefinable and precious, which makes it different.’

She said:  ‘Can one help falling in love?  Can one be blamed for that?’

For John she had little compassion, and the gay and feverish existence of New York spread out invitingly before her in a vision full of piquant contrasts with the death-in-life of the Five Towns!  But her beloved girls!  They were an insuperable barrier.  She could not leave them; she could not forfeit the right to look them in the eyes without embarrassment ...  And then the next moment—­somehow, she did not know how—­the difficulty of the girls was arranged.  And she had departed.  She had left the Five Towns for ever.  And she was in the train, in the hotel, on the steamer; she saw every detail of the escape.  Oh!  The rapture!  The tremors!  The long sigh!  The surrender!  The intense living!  Surely no price could be too great....

No!  Common sense, the acquirement of forty years, supervened, and informed her wild heart, with all the cold arrogance of sagacity, that these imaginings were vain.  She felt that she must write a brief and firm letter to Arthur and tell him to desist.  She saw with extraordinary clearness that this course was inevitable.  And lest her resolution might slacken, she turned instantly towards home and began to hurry.  The dog glanced up questioningly, and hurried too.

‘Why!’ she reflected.  ’People would say:  “And her husband’s aunt scarcely cold in her grave!"’ She laughed scornfully.

A carriage overtook her.  It was Mrs. Dain’s, coming from the direction of Oldcastle.

‘Good afternoon to you,’ Mrs. Dain shouted, without stopping, and then, when she caught sight of Bran:  ’Bless us!  The dog hasn’t brukken his leg after all!’

‘Broken his leg!’ Leonora repeated, astonished.  The carriage was now in front of her.

’Our Polly come in this morning and sat hersen down on a chair and told us as your dog had brukken his leg.  What tales one hears!’ Mrs. Dain had to twist her stout neck dangerously in order to finish the sentence.