Nobody whatever could truly be interested in her fate.  This was what she had achieved after a quarter of a century of ceaseless labour and anxiety, during which she had not once been away from the Rue Lord Byron for more than thirty hours at a stretch.  It was appalling—­the passage of years; and the passage of years would grow more appalling.  Ten years hence, where would she be?  She pictured herself dying.  Horrible!

Of course there was nothing to prevent her from going back to Bursley and repairing the grand error of her girlhood.  No, nothing except the fact that her whole soul recoiled from the mere idea of any such enterprise!  She was a fixture in the Rue Lord Byron.  She was a part of the street.  She knew all that happened or could happen there.  She was attached to it by the heavy chains of habit.  In the chill way of long use she loved it.  There!  The incandescent gas-burner of the street-lamp outside had been turned down, as it was turned down every night!  If it is possible to love such a phenomenon, she loved that phenomenon.  That phenomenon was a portion of her life, dear to her.

An agreeable young man, that Peel-Swynnerton!  Then evidently, since her days in Bursley, the Peels and the Swynnertons, partners in business, must have intermarried, or there must have been some affair of a will.  Did he suspect who she was?  He had had a very self-conscious, guilty look.  No!  He could not have suspected who she was.  The idea was ridiculous.  Probably he did not even know that her name was Scales.  And even if he knew her name, he had probably never heard of Gerald Scales, or the story of her flight.  Why, he could not have been born until after she had left Bursley!  Besides, the Peels were always quite aloof from the ordinary social life of the town.  No!  He could not have suspected her identity.  It was infantile to conceive such a thing.

And yet, she inconsequently proceeded in the tangle of her afflicted mind, supposing he had suspected it!  Supposing by some queer chance, he had heard her forgotten story, and casually put two and two together!  Supposing even that he were merely to mention in the Five Towns that the Pension Frensham was kept by a Mrs. Scales.  ‘Scales?  Scales?’ people might repeat.  ’Now, what does that remind me of?’ And the ball might roll and roll till Constance or somebody picked it up!  And then ...

Moreover—­a detail of which she had at first unaccountably failed to mark the significance—­this Peel-Swynnerton was a friend of the Mr. Povey as to whom he had inquired.  In that case it could not be the same Povey.  Impossible that the Peels should be on terms of friendship with Samuel Povey or his connections!  But supposing after all they were!  Supposing something utterly unanticipated and revolutionary had happened in the Five Towns!