CHAPTER I

Produced by Al Haines

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS

BY

ARNOLD BENNETT

THIRTEENTH EDITION

METHUEN & CO. LTD.

36 ESSEX STREET W.C.

LONDON

First issued in this Cheap Form (Third Edition) - September 5th 1912

Fourth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 1912

Fifth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - February 1913

Sixth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - July 1913

Seventh Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - April 1914

Eighth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 1914

Ninth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - November 1915

Tenth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - July 1916

Eleventh Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - March 1917

Twelfth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - February 1918

Thirteenth Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1919

This Book was First Published by Messrs Chatto &

Windus - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - September 11th, 1902

Second Edition - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - November 1902

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK

WITH AFFECTION AND ADMIRATION

TO

HERBERT SHARPE

AN ARTIST

WHOSE INDIVIDUALITY AND ACHIEVEMENT

HAVE CONTINUALLY INSPIRED ME

'Therefore, although it be a history

Homely and rude, I will relate the same

For the delight of a few natural hearts.'

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE KINDLING OF LOVE

II. THE MISER'S DAUGHTER

III. THE BIRTHDAY

IV. A VISIT

V. THE REVIVAL

VI. WILLIE

VII. THE SEWING MEETING

VIII. ON THE BANK

IX. THE TREAT

X. THE ISLE

XI. THE DOWNFALL

XII. AT THE PRIORY

XIII. THE BAZAAR

XIV. END OF A SIMPLE SOUL

ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS

CHAPTER I

THE KINDLING OF LOVE

The yard was all silent and empty under the burning afternoon heat,

which had made its asphalt springy like turf, when suddenly the

children threw themselves out of the great doors at either end of the

Sunday-school--boys from the right, girls from the left--in two

howling, impetuous streams, that widened, eddied, intermingled and

formed backwaters until the whole quadrangle was full of clamour and

movement. Many of the scholars carried prize-books bound in vivid

tints, and proudly exhibited these volumes to their companions and to

the teachers, who, tall, languid, and condescending, soon began to

appear amid the restless throng. Near the left-hand door a little girl

of twelve years, dressed in a cream coloured frock, with a wide and

heavy straw hat, stood quietly kicking her foal-like legs against the

wall. She was one of those who had won a prize, and once or twice she

took the treasure from under her arm to glance at its frontispiece with

a vague smile of satisfaction. For a time her bright eyes were fixed

expectantly on the doorway; then they would wander, and she started to

count the windows of the various Connexional buildings which on three

sides enclosed the yard--chapel, school, lecture-hall, and

chapel-keeper's house. Most of the children had already squeezed

through the narrow iron gate into the street beyond, where a steam-car

was rumbling and clattering up Duck Bank, attended by its immense

shadow. The teachers remained a little behind. Gradually dropping the

pedagogic pose, and happy in the virtuous sensation of duty

accomplished, they forgot the frets and fatigues of the day, and grew

amiably vivacious among themselves. With an instinctive mutual

complacency the two sexes mixed again after separation. Greetings and

pleasantries were exchanged, and intimate conversations begun; and

then, dividing into small familiar groups, the young men and women

slowly followed their pupils out of the gate. The chapel-keeper, who

always had an injured expression, left the white step of his residence,

and, walking with official dignity across the yard, drew down the

side-windows of the chapel one after another. As he approached the

little solitary girl in his course he gave her a reluctant acid

recognition; then he returned to his hearth. Agnes was alone.

'Well, young lady?'

She looked round with a jump, and blushed, smiling and screwing up her

little shoulders, when she recognised the two men who were coming

towards her from the door of the lecture-hall. The one who had called

out was Henry Mynors, morning superintendent of the Sunday-school and

conductor of the men's Bible-class held in the lecture-hall on Sunday

afternoons. The other was William Price, usually styled Willie Price,

secretary of the same Bible-class, and son of Titus Price, the

afternoon superintendent.

'I'm sure you don't deserve that prize. Let me see if it isn't too

good for you.' Mynors smiled playfully down upon Agnes Tellwright as

he idly turned the leaves of the book which she handed to him. 'Now,

do you deserve it? Tell me honestly.'

She scrutinised those sparkling and vehement black eyes with the

fearless calm of infancy. 'Yes, I do,' she answered in her high, thin

voice, having at length decided within herself that Mr. Mynors was

joking.

'Then I suppose you must have it,' he admitted, with a fine air of

giving way.

As Agnes took the volume from him she thought how perfect a man Mr.

Mynors was. His eyes, so kind and sincere, and that mysterious,

delicious, inexpressible something which dwelt behind his eyes: these

constituted an ideal for her.

Willie Price stood somewhat apart, grinning, and pulling a thin

honey-coloured moustache. He was at the uncouth, disjointed age,

twenty-one, and nine years younger than Henry Mynors. Despite a

continual effort after ease of manner, he was often sheepish and

self-conscious, even, as now, when he could discover no reason for such

a condition of mind. But Agnes liked him too. His simple, pale blue

eyes had a wistfulness which made her feel towards him as she felt

towards her doll when she happened to find it lying neglected on the

floor.

'Your big sister isn't out of school yet?' Mynors remarked.

Agnes shook her head. 'I've been waiting ever so long,' she said

plaintively.

At that moment a grey-haired woman with a benevolent but rather pinched

face emerged with much briskness from the girls' door. This was Mrs.

Sutton, a distant relative of Mynors'--his mother had been her second

cousin. The men raised their hats.

'I've just been down to make sure of some of you slippery folks for the

sewing-meeting,' she said, shaking hands with Mynors, and including

both him and Willie Price in an embracing maternal smile. She was

short-sighted and did not perceive Agnes, who had fallen back.

'Had a good class this afternoon, Henry?' Mrs. Sutton's breathing was

short and quick.

'Oh, yes,' he said, 'very good indeed.'

'You're doing a grand work.'

'We had over seventy present,' he added.

'Eh!' she said, 'I make nothing of numbers. Henry. I meant a _good_

class. Doesn't it say--Where _two or three_ are gathered together...?

But I must be getting on. The horse will be restless. I've to go up

to Hillport before tea. Mrs. Clayton Vernon is ill.'

Scarcely having stopped in her active course, Mrs. Sutton drew the men

along with her down the yard, she and Mynors in rapid talk: Willie

Price fell a little to the rear, his big hands half-way into his

pockets and his eyes diffidently roving. It appeared as though he

could not find courage to take a share in the conversation, yet was

anxious to convince himself of his right to do so.

Mynors helped Mrs. Sutton into her carriage, which had been drawn up

outside the gate of the school yard. Only two families of the Bursley

Wesleyan Methodists kept a carriage, the Suttons and the Clayton

Vernons. The latter, boasting lineage and a large house in the

aristocratic suburb of Hillport, gave to the society monetary aid and a

gracious condescension. But though indubitably above the operation of

any unwritten sumptuary law, even the Clayton Vernons ventured only in

wet weather to bring their carriage to chapel. Yet Mrs. Sutton, who

was a plain woman, might with impunity use her equipage on Sundays.

This license granted by Connexional opinion was due to the fact that

she so obviously regarded her carriage, not as a carriage, but as a

contrivance on four wheels for enabling an infirm creature to move

rapidly from place to place. When she got into it she had exactly the

air of a doctor on his rounds. Mrs. Sutton's bodily frame had long ago

proved inadequate to the ceaseless demands of a spirit indefatigably

altruistic, and her continuance in activity was a notable illustration

of the dominion of mind over matter. Her husband, a potter's valuer

and commission agent, made money with facility in that lucrative

vocation, and his wife's charities were famous, notwithstanding her

attempts to hide them. Neither husband nor wife had allowed riches to

put a factitious gloss upon their primal simplicity. They were as they

were, save that Mr. Sutton had joined the Five Towns Field Club and

acquired some of the habits of an archaeologist. The influence of

wealth on manners was to be observed only in their daughter Beatrice,

who, while favouring her mother, dressed at considerable expense, and

at intervals gave much time to the arts of music and painting. Agnes

watched the carriage drive away, and then turned to look up the stairs

within the school doorway. She sighed, scowled, and sighed again,

murmured something to herself, and finally began to read her book.

'Not come out yet?' Mynors was at her side once more, alone this time.

'No, not yet,' said Agnes, wearied. 'Yes. Here she is. Anna, what

ages you've been!'

Anna Tellwright stood motionless for a second in the shadow of the

doorway. She was tall, but not unusually so, and sturdily built up.

Her figure, though the bust was a little flat, had the lenient curves

of absolute maturity. Anna had been a woman since seventeen, and she

was now on the eve of her twenty-first birthday. She wore a plain,

home-made light frock checked with brown and edged with brown velvet,

thin cotton gloves of cream colour, and a broad straw hat like her

sister's. Her grave face, owing to the prominence of the cheekbones

and the width of the jaw, had a slight angularity; the lips were thin,

the brown eyes rather large, the eyebrows level, the nose fine and

delicate; the ears could scarcely be seen for the dark brown hair which

was brushed diagonally across the temples, leaving of the forehead only

a pale triangle. It seemed a face for the cloister, austere in

contour, fervent in expression, the severity of it mollified by that

resigned and spiritual melancholy peculiar to women who through the

error of destiny have been born into a wrong environment.

As if charmed forward by Mynors' compelling eyes, Anna stepped into the

sunlight, at the same time putting up her parasol. 'How calm and

stately she is,' he thought, as she gave him her cool hand and murmured

a reply to his salutation. But even his aquiline gaze could not

surprise the secrets of that concealing breast: this was one of the

three great tumultuous moments of her life--she realised for the first

time that she was loved.

'You are late this afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' Mynors began, with the

easy inflections of a man well accustomed to prominence in the society

of women. Little Agnes seized Anna's left arm, silently holding up the

prize, and Anna nodded appreciation.

'Yes,' she said as they walked across the yard, 'one of my girls has

been doing wrong. She stole a Bible from another girl, so of course I

had to mention it to the superintendent. Mr. Price gave her a long

lecture, and now she is waiting upstairs till he is ready to go with

her to her home and talk to her parents. He says she must be

dismissed.'

'Dismissed!'

Anna's look flashed a grateful response to him. By the least possible

emphasis he had expressed a complete disagreement with his senior

colleague which etiquette forbade him to utter in words.

'I think it's a very great pity,' Anna said firmly. 'I rather like the

girl,' she ventured in haste; 'you might speak to Mr. Price about it.'

'If he mentions it to me.'

'Yes, I meant that. Mr. Price said--if it had been anything else but a

_Bible_----'

'Um!' he murmured very low, but she caught the significance of his

intonation. They did not glance at each other: it was unnecessary.

Anna felt that comfortable easement of the spirit which springs from

the recognition of another spirit capable of understanding without

explanations and of sympathising without a phrase. Under that calm

mask a strange and sweet satisfaction thrilled through her as her

precious instinct of common sense--rarest of good qualities, and pining

always for fellowship--found a companion in his own. She had dreaded

the overtures which for a fortnight past she had foreseen were

inevitably to come from Mynors: he was a stranger, whom she merely

respected. Now in a sudden disclosure she knew him and liked him. The

dire apprehension of those formal 'advances' which she had watched

other men make to other women faded away. It was at once a release and

a reassurance.

They were passing through the gate, Agnes skipping round her sister's

skirts, when Willie Price reappeared front the direction of the chapel.

'Forgotten something?' Mynors inquired of him blandly.

'Ye-es,' he stammered, clumsily raising his hat to Anna. She thought

of him exactly as Agnes had done. He hesitated for a fraction of time,

and then went up the yard towards the lecture-hall.

'Agnes has been showing me her prize,' said Mynors, as the three stood

together outside the gate. 'I ask her if she thinks she really

deserves it, and she says she does. What do you think, Miss Big

Sister?'

Anna gave the little girl an affectionate smile of comprehension.

'What is it called, dear?'

'"Janey's Sacrifice or the Spool of Cotton, and other stories for

children,"' Agnes read out in a monotone: then she clutched Anna's

elbow and aimed a whisper at her ear.

'Very well, dear,' Anna answered aloud, 'but we must be back by a

quarter-past four.' And turning to Mynors: 'Agnes wants to go up to

the Park to hear the band play.'

'I'm going up there, too,' he said. 'Come along, Agnes, take my arm

and show me the way.' Shyly Agnes left her sister's side and put a

pink finger into Mynors' hand.

Moor Road, which climbs over the ridge to the mining village of

Moorthorne and passes the new Park on its way, was crowded with people

going up to criticise and enjoy this latest outcome of municipal

enterprise in Bursley: sedate elders of the borough who smiled grimly

to see one another on Sunday afternoon in that undignified, idly

curious throng; white-skinned potters, and miners with the swarthy

pallor of subterranean toil; untidy Sabbath loafers whom neither church

nor chapel could entice, and the primly-clad respectable who had not

only clothes but a separate deportment for the seventh day; house-wives

whose pale faces, as of prisoners free only for a while, showed a naïve

and timorous pleasure in the unusual diversion; young women made

glorious by richly-coloured stuffs and carrying themselves with the

defiant independence of good wages earned in warehouse or

painting-shop; youths oppressed by stiff new clothes bought at

Whitsuntide, in which the bright necktie and the nosegay revealed a

thousand secret aspirations; young children running and yelling with

the marvellous energy of their years; here and there a small

well-dressed group whose studious repudiation of the crowd betrayed a

conscious eminence of rank; louts, drunkards, idiots, beggars, waifs,

outcasts, and every oddity of the town: all were more or less under the

influence of a new excitement, and all with the same face of pleased

expectancy looked towards the spot where, half-way up the hill, a

denser mass of sightseers indicated the grand entrance to the Park.

'What stacks of folks!' Agnes exclaimed. 'It's like going to a

football match.'

'Do you go to football matches, Agnes?' Mynors asked. The child gave a

giggle.

Anna was relieved when these two began to chatter. She had at once, by

a firm natural impulse, subdued the agitation which seized her when she

found Mynors waiting with such an obvious intention at the school door;

she had conversed with him in tones of quiet ease; his attitude had

even enabled her in a few moments to establish a pleasant familiarity

with him. Nevertheless, as they joined the stream of people in Moor

Road, she longed to be at home, in her kitchen, in order to examine

herself and the new situation thus created by Mynors. And yet also she

was glad that she must remain at his side, but it was a fluttered joy

that his presence gave her, too strange for immediate appreciation. As

her eye, without directly looking at him, embraced the suave and

admirable male creature within its field of vision, she became aware

that he was quite inscrutable to her. What were his inmost thoughts,

his ideals, the histories of his heart? Surely it was impossible that

she should ever know these secrets! He--and she: they were utterly

foreign to each other. So the primary dissonances of sex vibrated

within her, and her own feelings puzzled her. Still, there was an

instant pleasure, delightful, if disturbing and inexplicable. And also

there was a sensation of triumph, which, though she tried to scorn it,

she could not banish. That a man and a woman should saunter together

on that road was nothing; but the circumstance acquired tremendous

importance when the man happened to be Henry Mynors and the woman Anna

Tellwright. Mynors--handsome, dark, accomplished, exemplary and

prosperous--had walked for ten years circumspect and unscathed amid the

glances of a whole legion of maids. As for Anna, the peculiarity of

her position had always marked her for special attention: ever since

her father settled in Bursley, she had felt herself to be the object of

an interest in which awe and pity were equally mingled. She guessed

that the fact of her going to the Park with Mynors that afternoon would

pass swiftly from mouth to mouth like the rumour of a decisive event.

She had no friends; her innate reserve had been misinterpreted, and she

was not popular among the Wesleyan community. Many people would say,

and more would think, that it was her money which was drawing Mynors

from the narrow path of his celibate discretion. She could imagine all

the innuendoes, the expressive nods, the pursing of lips, the lifting

of shoulders and of eyebrows. 'Money 'll do owt': that was the

proverb. But she cared not. She had the just and unshakable

self-esteem which is fundamental in all strong and righteous natures;

and she knew beyond the possibility of doubt that, though Mynors might

have no incurable aversion to a fortune, she herself, the spirit and

body of her, had been the sole awakener of his desire.

By a common instinct, Mynors and Anna made little Agnes the centre of

attraction. Mynors continued to tease her, and Agnes growing

courageous, began to retort. She was now walking between them, and the

other two smiled to each other at the child's sayings over her head,

interchanging thus messages too subtle and delicate for the coarse

medium of words.

As they approached the Park the bandstand came into sight over the

railway cutting, and they could hear the music of 'The Emperor's Hymn.'

The crude, brazen sounds were tempered in their passage through the

warm, still air, and fell gently on the ear in soft waves, quickening

every heart to unaccustomed emotions. Children leaped forward, and old

people unconsciously assumed a lightsome vigour.

The Park rose in

terraces from the railway station to a street of small villas almost on

the ridge of the hill. From its gilded gates to its smallest

geranium-slips it was brand-new, and most of it was red. The keeper's

house, the bandstand, the kiosks, the balustrades, the shelters--all

these assailed the eye with a uniform redness of brick and tile which

nullified the pallid greens of the turf and the frail trees. The

immense crowd, in order to circulate, moved along in tight processions,

inspecting one after another the various features of which they had

read full descriptions in the 'Staffordshire Signal'--waterfall,

grotto, lake, swans, boat, seats, faïence, statues--and scanning with

interest the names of the donors so clearly inscribed on such objects

of art and craft as from divers motives had been presented to the town

by its citizens. Mynors, as he manoeuvred a way for the two girls

through the main avenue up to the topmost terrace, gravely judged each

thing upon its merits, approving this, condemning that. In deciding

that under all the circumstances the Park made a very creditable

appearance he only reflected the best local opinion. The town was

proud of its achievement, and it had the right to be; for, though this

narrow pleasaunce was in itself unlovely, it symbolised the first faint

renascence of the longing for beauty in a district long given up to

unredeemed ugliness.

At length, Mynors having encountered many acquaintances, they got past

the bandstand and stood on the highest terrace, which was almost

deserted. Beneath them, in front, stretched a maze of roofs, dominated

by the gold angel of the Town Hall spire. Bursley, the ancient home of

the potter, has an antiquity of a thousand years. It lies towards the

north end of an extensive valley, which must have been one of the

fairest spots in Alfred's England, but which is now defaced by the

activities of a quarter of a million of people. Five contiguous

towns--Turnhill, Bursley, Hanbridge, Knype, and Longshaw--united by a

single winding thoroughfare some eight miles in length, have inundated

the valley like a succession of great lakes. Of these five Bursley is

the mother, but Hanbridge is the largest. They are mean and forbidding

of aspect--sombre, hard-featured, uncouth; and the vaporous poison of

their ovens and chimneys has soiled and shrivelled the surrounding

country till there is no village lane within a league but what offers a

gaunt and ludicrous travesty of rural charms. Nothing could be more

prosaic than the huddled, red-brown streets; nothing more seemingly

remote from romance. Yet be it said that romance is even here--the

romance which, for those who have an eye to perceive it, ever dwells

amid the seats of industrial manufacture, softening the coarseness,

transfiguring the squalor, of these mighty alchemic operations. Look

down into the valley from this terrace-height where love is kindling,

embrace the whole smoke-girt amphitheatre in a glance, and it may be

that you will suddenly comprehend the secret and superb significance of

the vast Doing which goes forward below. Because they seldom think,

the townsmen take shame when indicted for having disfigured half a

county in order to live. They have not understood that this

disfigurement is merely an episode in the unending warfare of man and

nature, and calls for no contrition. Here, indeed, is nature repaid

for some of her notorious cruelties. She imperiously bids man sustain

and reproduce himself, and this is one of the places where in the very

act of obedience he wounds and maltreats her. Out beyond the municipal

confines, where the subsidiary industries of coal and iron prosper amid

a wreck of verdure, the struggle is grim, appalling, heroic--so

ruthless is his havoc of her, so indomitable her ceaseless

recuperation. On the one side is a wresting from nature's own bowels

of the means to waste her; on the other, an undismayed, enduring

fortitude. The grass grows; though it is not green, it grows. In the

very heart of the valley, hedged about with furnaces, a farm still

stands, and at harvest-time the sooty sheaves are gathered in.

The band stopped playing. A whole population was idle in the Park, and

it seemed, in the fierce calm of the sunlight, that of all the

strenuous weekday vitality of the district only a murmurous hush

remained. But everywhere on the horizon, and nearer, furnaces cast

their heavy smoke across the borders of the sky: the Doing was never

suspended.

'Mr. Mynors,' said Agnes, still holding his hand, when they had been

silent a moment, 'when do those furnaces go out?'

'They don't go out,' he answered, 'unless there is a strike. It costs

hundreds and hundreds of pounds to light them again.'

'Does it?' she said vaguely. 'Father says it's the smoke that stops my

gilliflowers from growing.'

Mynors turned to Anna. 'Your father seems the picture of health. I

saw him out this morning at a quarter to seven, as brisk as a boy.

What a constitution!'

'Yes,' Anna replied, 'he is always up at six.'

'But you aren't, I suppose?'

'Yes, I too.'

'And me too,' Agnes interjected.

'And how does Bursley compare with Hanbridge?' Mynors continued. Anna

paused before replying.

'I like it better,' she said. 'At first--last year--I thought I

shouldn't.'

'By the way, your father used to preach in Hanbridge circuit-----'

'That was years ago,' she said quickly.

'But why won't he preach here? I dare say you know that we are rather

short of local preachers--good ones, that is.'

'I can't say why father doesn't preach now:' Anna flushed as she spoke.

'You had better ask him that.'

'Well, I will do,' he laughed. 'I am coming to see him soon--perhaps

one night next week.'

Anna looked at Henry Mynors as he uttered the astonishing words. The

Tellwrights had been in Bursley a year, but no visitor had crossed

their doorsteps except the minister, once, and such poor defaulters as

came, full of excuse and obsequious conciliation, to pay rent overdue.

'Business, I suppose?' she said, and prayed that he might not be

intending to make a mere call of ceremony.

'Yes, business,' he answered lightly. 'But you will be in?'

'I am always in,' she said. She wondered what the business could be,

and felt relieved to know that his visit would have at least some

assigned pretext; but already her heart beat with apprehensive

perturbation at the thought of his presence in their household.

'See!' said Agnes, whose eyes were everywhere, 'There's Miss Sutton.'

Both Mynors and Anna looked sharply round. Beatrice Sutton was coming

towards them along the terrace. Stylishly clad in a dress of pink

muslin, with harmonious hat, gloves, and sunshade, she made an

agreeable and rather effective picture, despite her plain, round face

and stoutish figure. She had the air of being a leader. Grafted on to

the original simple honesty of her eyes there was the

unconsciously-acquired arrogance of one who had always been accustomed

to deference. Socially, Beatrice had no peer among the young women who

were active in the Wesleyan Sunday-school. Beatrice had been used to

teach in the afternoon school, but she had recently advanced her

labours from the afternoon to the morning in response to a hint that if

she did so the force of her influence and example might lessen the

chronic dearth of morning teachers.

'Good afternoon, Miss Tellwright,' Beatrice said as she came up. 'So

you have come to look at the Park.'

'Yes,' said Anna, and then stopped awkwardly. In the tone of each

there was an obscure constraint, and something in Mynors' smile of

salute to Beatrice showed that he too shared it.

'Seen you before,' Beatrice said to him familiarly, without taking his

hand; then she bent down and kissed Agnes.

'What are you doing here, mademoiselle?' Mynors asked her.

'Father's just down below, near the lake. He caught sight of you, and

sent me up to say that you were to be sure to come in to supper

to-night. You will, won't you?'

'Yes, thanks. I had meant to.'

Anna knew that they were related, and also that Mynors was constantly

at the Suttons' house, but the close intimacy between these two came

nevertheless like a shock to her. She could not conquer a certain

resentment of it, however absurd such a feeling might seem to her

intelligence. And this attitude extended not only to the intimacy, but

to Beatrice's handsome clothes and facile urbanity, which by contrast

emphasised her own poor little frock and tongue-tied manner. The mere

existence of Beatrice so near to Mynors was like an affront to her.

Yet at heart, and even while admiring this shining daughter of success,

she was conscious within herself of a fundamental superiority. The

soul of her condescended to the soul of the other one.

They began to discuss the Park.

'Papa says it will send up the value of that land over there

enormously,' said Beatrice, pointing with her ribboned sunshade to some

building plots which lay to the north, high up the hill. 'Mr.

Tellwright owns most of that, doesn't he?' she added to Anna.

'I dare say he does,' said Anna. It was torture to her to refer to her

father's possessions.

'Of course it will be covered with streets in a few months. Will he

build himself, or will he sell it?'

'I haven't the least idea,' Anna answered, with an effort after gaiety

of tone, and then turned aside to look at the crowd. There, close

against the bandstand, stood her father, a short, stout, ruddy,

middle-aged man in a shabby brown suit. He recognised her, stared

fixedly, and nodded with his grotesque and ambiguous grin. Then he

sidled off towards the entrance of the Park. None of the others had

seen him. 'Agnes dear,' she said abruptly, 'we must go now, or we

shall be late for tea.'

As the two women said good-bye their eyes met, and in the brief second

of that encounter each tried to wring from the other the true answer to

a question which lay unuttered in her heart. Then, having bidden adieu

to Mynors, whose parting glance sang its own song to her, Anna took

Agnes by the hand and left him and Beatrice together.