ill. Afterwards we went down to Lulworth Cove for a change, and it was

while we were down there that I wrote the book. I was very happy then. Your work," she added, with a touch of innocent vanity, "not being creative, you may not realise what writing a book really is, but it's very wonderful. I used to sit on the rocks and scribble away by the hour. I think it was very good too, and I was proud of it. And the day after we got home, in the autumn--we had been called back by a telegram saying that my father had reached Liverpool--I packed up the manuscript on the dining-room table and addressed it to Mr. Murray. Someone had spilt a little black currant jam on the tablecloth, and as I arranged the pages I managed to smear a little of it across the title, and I remember getting cold water and a bit of cotton-wool and washing it off, and then drying it before the kitchen fire, and mending the spoilt letters with a very fine pen, so that it would look nice. 'Hannah' was the name of it. Not a very good title, but that was the way it came to me," she added softly, and her voice trailed away into silence.

The darkness increased suddenly, and the firelight made a lake of colour on the hearthrug, the only colour left in the room.

"Well," Wick asked hoarsely, "did John Murray publish it?"

She laughed. "John Murray never saw it. I left it on the hall table that night, and was going to register it myself in the morning. When my father came in late he noticed it, and opened it."

"Well----?"

Somehow he never forgot the feel of the room at that moment, or the chill sound of the next words as they fell on his waiting ears.

"He burnt it." After a little while she went on: "He was horrified by it. I suppose it was not very proper, written by a young girl, and he had never known that I understood about such things, but of course I did, after the adventure of poor Kitty Bailey. Ring the bell, will you, Oliver? It's growing very dark."

He rang, and while the lamp was being brought he knelt on the old hearthrug and mended the fire. In a few moments the crude, unlovely room was piteously bright, and the mystery had flown.

"Weren't you very angry?" Wick asked, as the door closed on the maid.

"I? Oh, no. It was he who was angry--my father. I think he was too hard on me, but it didn't matter very much. It was probably very badly written, though at the time I thought it was good."

Wick held out his hand. "Well, I must be off. Thank you so much for telling me, Mrs. Walbridge. Did you go on writing at once then?"

Her thin, small-boned hand quivered in his as she answered:

"Oh, no. I didn't write again until--until after my marriage."

They stood looking very kindly at each other, the old woman and the young man, and then she said suddenly, as he took up his hat and stick:

"I don't know why I told you, except, perhaps, that it happened, the burning of 'Hannah,' I mean, thirty-five years ago to-day. I was thinking about it before you came."

As he hurried through the rain towards the 'bus, the young man counted back.

"That makes her fifty-two," he said. "I thought she was older than that."

As he squeezed into the crowded interior of "everybody's carriage," as de Amicis calls it, a feeling of great pity swept over him. "How it must have hurt," he thought, "for her to remember it like that."