in the last and most terrible hours bound her to her desk as with a chain; and when her tired and exhausted brain ceased to formulate phrases, the picture of the lonely room, the night walks, and the suffering of the jaded girl, stared her in the face with a terrible distinctness.  Her only moments of gladness were when the post brought a cheque from London.  Sometimes they were for a pound, sometimes for fifteen shillings.  Once she received five pounds ten—­it was for her story.  On the 10th of September she received the following letter: 

’DARLING ALICE, ’Thanks a thousand times for your last letter, and the money enclosed.  It came in the nick of time, for I was run almost to my last penny.  I did not write before, because I didn’t feel in the humour to do anything.  Thank goodness!  I’m not sick any more, though I don’t know that it isn’t counterbalanced by the dreadful faintness and the constant movement.  Isn’t it awful to sit here day after day, watching myself, and knowing the only relief I shall get will be after such terrible pain?  I woke up last night crying with the terror of it.  Cervassi says there are cases on record of painless confinements, and in my best moods I think mine is to be one of them.  I know it is wrong to write all these things to a good girl like you, but I think talking about it is part of the complaint, and poor sinner me has no one to talk to.  Do you remember my old black cashmere?  I’ve been altering it till there’s hardly a bit of the original body left; but now the skirt is adding to my troubles by getting shorter and shorter in front.  It is now quite six inches off the ground, and instead of fastening it I have to pin the placket-hole, and then it falls nearly right. . . .  Only three weeks longer, and then. . .  But there, I won’t look forward, because I know I am going to die, and all the accounting for it, and everything else, will be on your shoulders.  Good-bye, dear; I shan’t write again, at least not till afterwards.  And if there is an afterward, I shall never be able to thank you properly; but still I think it will be a weight off you.  Is it so, dear?  Do you wish I were dead?  I know you don’t.  It was unkind to write that last line; I will scratch it out.  You will not be angry, dear.  I am too wretched to know what I am writing, and I want to lie down. 
                                ’Always affectionately yours,
                                                       ‘MAY GOULD.’

Outside the air was limpid with sunlight, and the newly mown meadow was golden in the light of evening.  The autumn-coloured foliage of the chestnuts lay mysteriously rich and still, harmonizing in measured tones with the ruddy tints of the dim September sunset.  The country dozed as if satiated with summer love.  Heavy scents were abroad—­the pungent odours of the aftermath.  A high baritone voice broke the languid silence, and, in embroidered smoking-jacket and cap, Mr. Barton twanged his guitar.  Milord had been thrown down amid the hay; and Mrs. Barton and Olive were showering it upon him.  The old gentleman’s legs were in the air.