“He seems to have had a feeling heart.”

“Oh well, he had brought the girl up.  I don’t think he cared for anything in the world but her.”

“And Dr. Nash saw Mr. Bates as soon as you got him to your brother’s?  If Dr. Nash thinks he’ll pull through I should think you must feel hopeful.”

“Yes—­well, I left him on the sofa.  He’s rather bad.”

There was a pause, as if Mrs. Rexford might be sighing and shaking her head over some suffering before described.

Sophia had gone to the milk cellar to get cream for tea.  Eliza followed her out into the yard.

“I had better not stay to tea,” said she, “there won’t be room.”

“Oh yes, there will; I have a headache, so I’m not going into the dining-room.”

“Then I won’t stay.  I would rather come some night when you are there.”

“How handsome your dress looks!  You are getting quite a fine lady, Eliza.”

“My dress!” said Eliza, looking down at it.  It seemed to her so long since she thought of it.  “Yes,” she continued, stroking it, “it looks very nicely, doesn’t it?”

Sophia assented heartily.  She liked the girl’s choice of clothes; they seemed to remove her from, and set her far above, the commoner people who frequented the hotel.

“You’re very tired, Miss Sophia, I can see; and it’s no wonder after last night.  It’s no fun staying to-night, for we all feel dull about what’s happened; I’ll go now.”

Eliza went quietly down the lane again, in shadow of the lilac hedge, and let herself out of the wooden gate; but she did not return to the village.  She looked down the road the other way, measuring with her eyes the distance to the roof of Trenholme’s house.  She walked in that direction, and when she came to Captain Rexford’s pasture field, she got through the bars and crossed it to a small wood that lay behind.  Long golden strips of light lay athwart the grass between elongated shades cast by cows and bushes.  The sabbath quiet was everywhere.  All the cows in the pasture came towards her, for it was milking time, and any one who came suggested to them the luxury of that process.  Some followed her in slow and dubious fashion; some stopped before her on the path.  Eliza did not even look at them, and when she went in among the young fir trees they left her alone.

It was not a thick wood; the evening sun shone freely between the clumps of young spruce.  In an open glade an elm tree stood, stretching out branches sensitive to each breath of air, golden in the slant sunlight above the low dark firs.  The roots of this tree were raised and dry.  Eliza sat down on them.  She could see between the young trees out to the side of the college houses and their exit to the road.  She could see the road too:  it was this she watched.

CHAPTER III.