In the afternoon she went out for a stroll through the streets, and up to the monument in the park.  Cowfold was busy, for it was market-day.  Sheep-pens were in the square full of sheep, and men were purchasing them and picking them out as they were sold; dogs were barking; the wandering dealer who pitched his earthenware van at the corner was ringing his plates together to prove them indestructible; old Madge Campion, who sold gooseberry-tarts and hot mutton-pies on her board under an awning supported by clothes-props, was surrounded by a shoal of children, as happy as the sunshine; the man with the panorama was exhibiting, at one halfpenny a head, the murder of Lord William Russell to a string of boys and girls who mounted the stool in turn to look through the glasses; and the cheapjack was expatiating on the merits of cutlery, pictures, fire-irons, and proving that his brass candlestick, honestly-worth-ten-shill
ings-but-obtainable-at-one-and-four-pence-because-he-really-could-not-cart-it-about-any-longer answered the double purpose of a candlestick and burglar-alarm by reason of the tremendous click of the spring, which anybody might—­if they liked—­mistake for a pistol.

Through all the crowd Miriam walked unsympathetic.  She cursed the constitution with which she was born.  She wished she had been endowed with that same blessed thoughtlessness, and that she could be taken out of herself with an interest in pigs, pie-dishes, and Cowfold affairs generally.  She went on up to her favourite resting-place; everything was so still, and her eye wandered over the illimitable distance but without pleasure.  She recollected that she had an engagement; that two cousins of her husband were coming to tea, and she slowly returned.  At half-past five they appeared.  They chattered away merrily with Mr. Farrow, who was as lively as they were, until by degrees Miriam’s silence began to operate, and they grew dull.  Tea being over, she managed to escape, and as she went upstairs she heard the laughter recommence, for it was she who had suppressed it.  Lying down in her room overhead, the noise continued, and it came into her mind that wherever she went she cast a cold shadow.  “They must wish me dead,” she thought.

She had been married so short a time; to what a dreary length the future stretched before her, and she did not love the man she had chosen, as she understood love.  How was life to be lived?  She did not reproach herself.  If she could have done that, if she could have accused herself of deliberate self-betrayal, it would have been better; but she seemed to have been blindfolded, and led by some unknown force into the position in which she found herself.