lady's seclusion."

"You see the necessity for it. However, we do not wish any talk on the
subject."

Slowly it came to Sophy's comprehension that she had been treated like
an insane woman, and her anger, though quiet, was of that kind that
means action of some sort. She went to her room, but it was only to
recall the wrong upon wrong, the insult upon insult she had received.

"I will go away from it all," she said. "I will go away until Archie
returns. I will not sleep another night under the same roof with that
wicked woman. I will stay away till I die, ere I will do it."

Usually she had little strength for much movement, but at this hour she
felt no physical weakness. She made Leslie bring her a street costume
of brown cloth, and she carefully put into her purse all the money she
had. Then she ordered the carriage and rode as far as her aunt
Kilgour's. "Come for me in an hour, Thomas," she said, and then she
entered the shop.

"Aunt, I am come back to you. Will you let me stay with you till Archie
gets home? I can bide yon dreadful old woman no longer."

"Meaning Madame Braelands?"

"She is just beyond all things. This morning she has kept a letter that
Archie wrote me; and she has told me a lot of lies in its place. I'm
not able to thole her another hour."

"I'll tell you what, Sophy, Madame was here since I saw you, and she
says you are neither to be guided nor endured I don't know who to
believe."

"Oh! aunt, aunt, you know well I wouldn't tell you a lie. I am so
miserable! For God's sake, take me in!"

"I'd like to, Sophy, but I'm not free to do so."

"You're putting Madame's bit of siller and the work she's promised you
from the Glamis girl before my heart-break. Oh, how can you?"

"Sophy, you have lived with me, and I saw you often dissatisfied and
unreasonable for nothing at all."

"I was a bit foolish lassie then. I am a poor, miserable, sick woman
now."

"You have no need to be poor, and miserable, and sick. I won't
encourage you to run away from your home and your duty. At any rate,
bide where you are till your husband comes back. I would be wicked to
give you any other advice."

"You mean that you won't let me come and stay with you?"

"No, I won't. I would be your worst enemy if I did."

"Then good-bye. You will maybe be sorry some day for the 'No' you have
just said."

She went slowly out of the store, and Griselda was very unhappy, and
called to her to come back and wait for her carriage. She did not heed
or answer, but walked with evident purpose down a certain street. It
led her to the railway station, and she went in and took a ticket for
Edinburgh. She had hardly done so when the train came thundering into
the station, she stepped into it, and in a few minutes was flying at
express rate to her destination. She had relatives in Edinburgh, and
she thought she knew their dwelling place, having called on them with
her Aunt Kilgour when they were in that city, just previous to her
marriage. But she found that they had removed, and no one in the
vicinity knew to what quarter of the town. She was too tired to pursue
inquiries, or even to think any more that day, and she went to a hotel
and tried to rest and sleep. In the morning she remembered that her
mother's cousin, Jane Anderson, lived in Glasgow at some number in
Monteith Row. The Row was not a long one, even if she had to go from
house to house to find her relative. So she determined to go on to
Glasgow.

She felt ill, strangely ill; she was in a burning fever and did not
know it. Yet she managed to get into the proper train, and to retain
her consciousness for sometime afterwards, ere she succumbed to the
inevitable consequences of her condition. Before the train reached its
destination, however, she was in a desperate state, and the first
action of the guard was to call a carriage and send her to a hospital.

After this kindness had been done, Sophy was dead to herself and the
world for nearly three weeks. She remembered nothing, she knew nothing,
she spoke only in the most disconnected and puzzling manner. For her
speech wandered between the homely fisher life of her childhood and the
splendid social life of Braelands. Her personality was equally
perplexing. The clothing she wore was of the finest quality; her rings,
and brooch, and jewelled watch, indicated wealth and station; yet her
speech, especially during the fever, was that of the people, and as she
began to help herself, she had little natural actions that showed the
want of early polite breeding. No letter or card, no name or address of
any kind, was found on her person; she appeared to be as absolutely
lost as a stone dropped into the deep sea.

And when she came to herself and realised where she was, and found out
from her attendant the circumstances under which she had been brought
to the hospital, she was still more reticent. For her first thought
related to the annoyance Archie would feel at her detention in a public
hospital; her second, to the unmerciful use Madame would make of the
circumstance. She could not reason very clearly, but her idea was to
find her cousin and gain her protection, and then, from that more
respectable covett, to write to her husband. She might admit her
illness--indeed, she would be almost compelled to do that, for she had
fallen away so much, and had had her hair cut short during the height
of the fever--but Archie and Madame must not know that she had been in
a public hospital. For fisher-people have a singular dislike to public
charity of any kind; they help one another. And, to Sophy's
intelligence, the hospital episode was a disgrace that not even her
insensibility could quite excuse.

Several weeks passed in that long, spotless, white room full of
suffering, before Sophy was able to stand upon her feet, before indeed
she began to realise the passage of time, and the consequences which
must have followed her long absence and silence. But all her efforts at
writing were failures. The thought she wished to express slipped off
into darkness as soon as she tried to write it; her vision failed her,
her hands failed her; she could only sink back upon her pillow and lie
inert and almost indifferent for hours afterwards. And as the one
letter she wished to write was to Archie, she could not depute it to
any one else. Besides, the nurse would tell _where_ she was, and that
was a circumstance she must at all hazards keep to herself. It had been
hot July weather when she was first placed on her hard, weary bed of
suffering, it was the end of September when she was able to leave the
hospital. Her purse with its few sovereigns in it was returned to her,
and the doctor told her kindly, if she had any friends in the world, to
go at once to their care.

"You have talked a great deal of the sea and the boats," he said; "get
close to the sea if you can; it is perhaps the best and the only thing
for you."

She thanked him and answered: "I am going to the Fife coast. I have
friends there, I think." She put out a little wasted hand, and he
clasped it with a sigh.

"So young, so pretty, so good," he said to the nurse, as they stood
watching her walk very feebly and unsteadily away.

"I will give her three months at the longest, if she has love and care.
I will give her three weeks--nay, I will say three days, if she has to
care for herself, or if any particular trouble come to her."

Then they turned from the window, and Sophy hired a cab and went to
Monteith Row to try and find her friends. She wanted to write to her
husband and ask him to come for her. She thought she could do this best
from her cousin's home. "I will give her a bonnie ring or two, and I
will tell her the whole truth, and she will be sure to stand by me, for
there is nothing wrong to stand by, and blood is aye thicker than
water." And then her thoughts wandered on to a contingency that brought
a flush of pain to her cheeks. "Besides, maybe Archie might have an ill
thought put into his head, and then the doctors and nurses in the
hospital could tell him what would make all clear." She went through
many of the houses, inquiring for Ellen Montgomery, but could not find
her, and she was finally obliged to go to a hotel and rest. "I will
take the lave of the houses in the morning," she thought, "it is aye
the last thing that is the right thing; everybody finds that out."

That evening, however, something happened which changed all her ideas
and intentions. She went into the hotel parlour and sat down; there
were some newspapers on the table, and she lifted one. It was an
Edinburgh paper, but the first words her eyes fell on was her husband's
name. Her heart leaped up at the sight of it, and she read the
paragraph. Then the paper dropped from her hands. She felt that she was
going to faint, and by a supreme effort of will she recalled her senses
and compelled them to stay and suffer with her. Again, and then again,
she read the paragraph, unable at first to believe what she did read,
for it was a notice, signed by her husband, advising the world in
general that she had voluntarily left his home, and that he would no
longer be responsible for any debt she might contract in his name. To
her childlike, ignorant nature, this public exposure of her was a final
act. She felt that it was all the same as a decree of divorce. "Archie
had cast her off; Madame had at last parted them." For an hour she sat
still in a very stupour of despair.

"But something might yet be done; yes, something must be done. She
would go instantly to Fife; she would tell Archie everything. He could
not blame her for being sick and beyond reason or knowledge. The
doctors and nurses of the hospital would certify to the truth of all
she said." Ah! she had only to look in a mirror to know that her own
wasted face and form would have been testimony enough.

That night she could not move, she had done all that it was possible
for her to do that day; but on the morrow she would be rested and she
might trust herself to the noise and bustle of the street and railway.
The day was well on before she found strength to do this; but at length
she found herself on the direct road to Largo, though she could hardly
tell how it had been managed. As she approached the long chain of Fife
fishing-villages, she bought the newspaper most widely read in them;
and, to her terror and shame, found the same warning to honest folk
against her. She was heartsick. With this barrier between Archie and
herself, how could she go to Braelands? How could she face Madame? What
mockery would be made of her explanations? No, she must see Archie
alone. She must tell him the whole truth, somewhere beyond Madame's
contradiction and influence. Whom should she go to? Her aunt Kilgour
had turned her away, even before this disgrace. Her cousin Isobel's
husband