'How do you get to Brixome Junction?' asked Reid fretfully.

'Yo' mun tak' to t' reet when yo' get aht o' Station Yard an' keep on while yo' coome to Mossmoore. It's fair across t' moor.'

'I suppose there's nothing else for it, Miss Wyndham. I hope you feel equal to the walk.'

'Thank you, I'm not at all tired,' she

answered, with not less formality. For Reid's question was the merest formality. He was thinking wholly of himself; of the fool he had made of himself; of the figure he would cut at home of the four or five awkward hours before him of forced and hollow talk. As for Norah, the prospect of these hours was even more terrible to her; for his dead, leaden manner weighed upon her like a nightmare; and this manner was by no means improved after they left the station together; for he resented this addition to his miseries as brought upon him by the original sin of her coquetry,

VOL. II.

M

CHAPTER XXV.

A NIGHT OF TERROR.

Whom when his lady saw, to him she ran

With hasty joy: to see him made her glad,

And sad to view his visage pale and wan

Who erst in flowers of freshest youth was clad.-
The Fairie Queen.

THE sun had some time set when they started from the station, and before they reached Mossmoor 'the dove's twilight' had deepened into 'the raven's twilight,' and 'all the paths were dim.' At the edge of the moor the road Yshaped right and left, and Reid unhesitatingly took the right branch. He remembered the porter's saying, 'Keep to the right,' but had forgotten, or, in his prepossession with the wretched prospect before him, he had not heeded the limitation, when you get out of the station yard.' Anyway, he had got it fixed firmly in

his head that he was to keep throughout to the right, which, most unfortunately, was the wrong road. That he had got wrong did not, however, occur to Reid until they had gone the full distance named by the porter without a sign of the appearance or of the approach to a town, village, or station. There was no sign, indeed, even of a house, and, from the moment they had entered upon the moor, they hadn't met a creature. Suddenly Reid stopped to strike a match to look at his watch.

'Good gracious!' he exclaimed, 'it's halfpast nine; we must have lost our way!' Norah was silent in sheer dismay. That confounded porter!' added Reid, enraged with every one but himself.

'Oh, do let us hurry back!' cried Norah. There's no use hurrying back or forward now,' he answered irritably. Was there ever anything so

He broke off as though no words could express his disgust at the situation. His sole

thought of Norah in the matter was that she was responsible for involving him in such a ridiculous, unpleasant, and compromising situation. In truth, her peremptory rejection of him had so mortified his self-esteem that his light love, like a sweet light wine, was soured in a moment into a rather biting vinegar. 'Guardati d'aceto di vin dolce,' to use in a new sense that happy Italian proverb. So much of his love for her as was not self-love slightly disguised had but little body in it, and was quickly and tartly soured by the souring of his self-love.

'We'd better push on,' he said, after a pause of self-commiseration. We must be nearer some place ahead than that little hole of a Serborne.' So saying he walked on, with Norah silent at his side. Presently he said, perfunctorily, 'I'm afraid you must be very tired.'

'Not very, thank you.' But, in truth, she was worn out completely. Not being overstrong to begin with, she was pretty nearly done up with walking and climbing before they

started from the station. Since, she had had a long hill-climb to the moor, and then two miles on a mere skeleton of a road-all bones and boulders, from which the flesh, so to speak, had been worn away with traffic, or washed away by rains. But, besides this physical fatigue, there was the depression of such a walk, after such a scene, with such a companion! And now upon this comes the nightmare horror of hopelessness of escape from her wretchednesslost on this endless moor at night-all night, perhaps! What would her father think? It was characteristic of Norah that she never for a moment troubled herself about what Mrs. Grundy (as impersonated by the Summers family, or anyone else) would think. Indeed, she never for a moment thought of the thing herself from Mrs. Grundy's point of view. She was swallowed up in anxiety about her father's anxiety. Her secluded life, which had given her a woman's self-reliance, had left her the innocence of a child, and her idea of her father's