“I wonder why he wouldn’t speak to me?” she thought, with a pang.  “I wonder if he has really got over caring?” She had always thought of Abel as a possession more absolutely her own than even Mr. Jonathan’s provision.  When she had said so passionately that she wanted to be free, she had not meant that at any minute she chose, Abel would not be ready and willing to fly back into bondage.  That Abel, after all these years, should actually have ceased to care for her—­should have refused even to speak to her!  It was absurd—­it was vindictive—­it was unchristian!  She had half a mind to get Mr. Mullen to talk to him.  Then her heart throbbed when she remembered the touch of his hand, the look in his eyes, the thirst of his lips seeking hers.  That was only six months ago—­such a very little while—­and now he had rushed away from the sight of her!  She thought of their parting, when she had said that she wanted to see the world, and he had offered at once to release her.  Since then she had seen the world until she was tired of it.  At times she had been terribly homesick for Old Church, and she had never been happy except when Gay had taken her to see pictures or into wonderful parks.  Always the thought had lain hidden in her mind that some day, when she could stand it no longer, she would go back and wear her red jacket and run free in the fields with Abel again.  Her very selfishness had seemed natural to her because Abel had always been there, like the air and the sky and the broomsedge; he was a part of the scene, and she found it impossible to detach him from his surroundings.

At the station in Richmond, Gay met them, and for the first few minutes his mother absorbed his attention.  Molly had not seen him for six weeks, and she noticed that he had grown fleshier and that this lent an additional heaviness to his shaven chin.  Even his charming smile could not disguise the slight coarseness of feature, with which he was beginning already to pay for his pleasures.  By the time he was forty, he would be quite stout and “lumpy,” she thought.

There was much excitement about collecting Mrs. Gay’s packages, and the drive to the hotel was filled with anxious inquiries from Kesiah, who was always nervous and fussy when she travelled.

“Molly, did you see my umbrella put in?”

“Yes, Aunt Kesiah, it is here in the corner by Jonathan.”

“I forgot to notice Angela’s medicine case.  Did you see that it wasn’t overlooked?”

“Yes, Patsey has it.”

Then came a solicitous exhibition of filial affection on the part of Gay, and at last, to Molly’s relief, they arrived at the new, brilliantly lighted hotel, and were led through stifling corridors, carpeted in red, to their rooms on the second floor in the front of the building.  As she passed over the velvet carpets, Molly had again the sensation that she was walking over ploughed ground; and when she had escaped from Mrs. Gay’s sitting-room, on the pretext