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She was thankful to God that Matthew was in Newcastle that day. She didn't answer the letter, but when she next took the girls into the city to do some shopping she left them and made her way to the offices of Weir and Dixon, and there she met Mr. Weir in person and she asked him if he would be good enough to do what he thought best with the money, also to continue to let the house should it fall vacant.

Finally, she had told him quietly but firmly not to communicate with her again no matter what the situation. If she wanted to give him any further instructions she would call.

Mr. Weir had undoubtedly been surprised at the calm poise of his mysterious client; for he had been given to understand from private sources that the person was of low mentality, being little more than a gypsy, and had once lived wild.

Now, nine years later, she was sitting in exactly the same seat looking across the desk at the heavily jowled man who seemed to her to have grown very old in the intervening' time.

Mr. Weir, on his part gazing at his client, imagined that time had stood still, for she did not look a day older than when he had seen her last; in tact he could say that she almost looked younger, and she in her thirty-seventh year. She was a slightly disturbing person, he found, with her dress so gay, and he understood that her husband had been dead just over a year. Women were strange creatures, and this one before him very strange, but charming nevertheless. Ah, yes.

Although she did not speak like a lady, her voice having a strong Northern inflection, he noted that she made use of words, and in their right context. She must, he thought, have had some form of education.

And now, after all these years, seventeen years to be exact, she wished to view her property. He could not believe that she had never seen it.

Surely, he would have imagined, she had gone on the quiet and looked at the house; but no, she assured him, she had never seen it.

This was a very strange affair, a very strange affair indeed. Here she was, a person of the common people, the widow of a miller who had left her quite warm, so she indicated, besides which she had been the recipient of a thousand pounds a year for the past seventeen years; and this money, under his careful supervision, had trebled itself.

What was more, she owned the property that was bringing in a hundred a year, or had been up till three months before. She was a rich woman, and he told her so.

"Your estate is considerable, Mrs. Turnbull," he said. And to this she inclined her head, saying, "That is good to know for ... for if I like the house I

may. " She hesitated; she was about to say " live there," but the correct term was " take up residence there," and on an inward laugh she said just that.

"Indeedl" "Yes."

"We have a dient interested in it, but ... but he hasn't made up his mind yet."

"Well, we'll wait and see what I think about it first."

"Of course, Mrs. Tumbull, of course."

"How much did you say that my account stands at now?"

"Around thirty thousand, give and take a few hundred; the expenses have been borne, as arranged" -he paused"--by the donor."

She looked at him across the desk for a moment, then said quietly, "I would like you, Mr. Weir, if you would, to take a thousand pounds by way of recompense for the work you have done on my behalf."

He slowly rose from his seat and, coming round the desk, he stood before her, his hands joined, and he stared down at her while moving his head slowly;

then he said, "Madam, you are most generous, indeed more than generous.

And I am most grateful, most grateful."

And Mr. Weir meant what he said; he was a warm man himself and not in need of a thousand or two, but in all his years of service to the public no client of his had said "Here is a thousand to recompense you for your work." They paid him his charges, which weren't low, and therefore felt he was getting his due. Her donor, whose affairs he had seen to since the day he had come to this office and asked him it he could find an establishment for him, had never, when on the two visits he had paid him during the last seventeen years, said, "There is fifty guineas extra for your services." The gentry weren't made that way.

Few people, when he came to think about it, were made that way. Those who pulled themselves up by their boot laces held on to their money even tighter than the middle classes or the gentry; yet here was this woman, not a lady according to set standards, yet not entirely of the common people; he didn't know into which class to place her, nevertheless she was offering him a thousand pounds. Now, taking her hand, he' pressed it warmly, saying, "Madam, I'm always at your service with or without your gift.

Nevertheless, I'll take it gratefully and thank you again most warmly.

" He bowed low over her hand and for a moment she thought he was going to kiss it, and at this she firmly withdrew it.

She drove the trap through the press near the markets, up Newgate Street, along the Gallowgate;

then, asking the way, she took the road to Denton. Her heart was beating as it had not done for years, bumping in hard thuds against her rib cage. She knew what she was going to see. The house would be low and white, he had said black and white, but she knew it would appear all white when the sun shone on it, and the sun was shining sharply bright today.

And then she saw it. She had turned off the main road and gone down a tree-shaded grass track at the far end of which were two wooden gates.

These were open and she drove straight through. A man was working in a bed to the side of the drive and she stopped and said, "I have come to see the house, I have the key" ; and he touched his forelock and replied, "Aye, Ma'am." She drove on along the short drive and around the bend, and there it was. It was black and white, the black standing out more than the white. It had deep-latticed windows and a black oak door with a brass knocker and knob, and in the ordinary way she would have thrilled to it and said it was a lovely house, homely looking, inviting. But it wasn't the house she saw in her dreams.

Her heart had stopped its thumping. She got down from the trap, tied the cob to a horse post on the drive, and inserting a key in the lock she entered the house, dive's house, her house.

The hall was quite large for the size of the house; it had a fireplace at one end and was half paneled and the low ceiling was beamed, and the stairs went up from the middle of it. The drawing room was long and narrow and had a small conservatory leading off.

There was a breakfast room and a dining room, and a nice kitchen, but only one third the size of the mill kitchen. She walked slowly up the stairs. The landing was as large as a room. There were four bedrooms each with a dressing room. Then up another flight of stairs, and there were four attic bedrooms. She descended to the landing again and stood looking down the stairs into the hall. This is the house she should have been living in for the past seventeen years; this is the house in which she should have brought up her son; she could see him now, standing in the hall looking up at her as he had looked on the day she had met him on the road five years ago, in the spring.

She had felt a sense of uneasiness about that time. She wanted to get out and roam but Matthew didn't like her taking walks; he always suspected her of making her way to the fell and from the fell looking towards the wall that surrounded the Hall. When, in the early days, the girls had wanted to go back to see the dwelling place he had been firm and said no, hadn't they seen enough of the dwelling place? But on this spring day when he had business in Newcastle and had taken Victoria with him, to give her the chance to visit Sarah and Charlotte he had said, but mainly to have Victoria to himself on the drive, she had taken the trap, saying to William she was going into Shields for some odds and ends of silks and a book for Matthew's birthday. She had gone into Shields, but by way of the road that passed the North Lodge;

and when she came to the slope she had stopped and, leaving the trap, had walked slowly up to the dwelling place, or what was left of it.

The roof had fallen in because the wooden supports had been ripped away; the floor of the storeroom had been ripped up too. The walls were still standing, and there was the fireplace around which they had huddled for years. And as she stood and stared she was amazed that they had managed to exist in this shanty; more amazed still that her son had been born here.

Saddened, she went down the slope to the trap again. It was when she rounded the bend towards the South Lodge that she noticed two horsemen coming towards her. The road was narrow and she saw the younger rider draw his horse in and follow behind the older one. Then she was abreast of them. She was oblivious to her heart racing because she thought it had stopped; time stood still while her eyes looked into those of Lord Fischel. She wasn't aware that she had drawn the trap to a standstill, but she was aware that he was raising his hat to her, and that the younger man behind him had followed suit. Her eyes rested on the younger man, the youth. He had dark hair, a prominent nose, a wide mouth, and brown eyes. It was only when she urged the horse forward again that she realized she had stopped.

When she reached the turnpike she found her face was wet, and she was sitting with the reins slack in her hand; and the horse had stopped, not knowing which of the four strange roads to take. She walked down the stairs now and into the drawing room and, standing in the middle of it, she looked about her as she thought, I'll have a rose- colored carpet in here and pale green walls and soft gold curtains.

She had made up her mind.

The following day she took Sarah and Charlotte to see the house and asked them how they would like to live there, and they exclaimed, "Oh, our Cissie, you can't mean iti" And when she said she did, adding,

"But of course, that's until you marry," they had both shaken their heads.

Charlotte at twenty-six was well past the marrying age; moreover, she was very plain. Sarah at twenty- seven was comely, but she had given her heart to a young man when she was twenty-two, and three months before the marriage he had died of the cholera. So they were both resigned, and happily so, to spinsterhood, and the thought of living with Cissie again delighted them.

Later, she brought together the boys, as she still thought of them, and when she told them her plans they were silent, Joe because he suddenly realized how much he would miss her being near, William because he was feeling unnecessary guilt, and Jimmy because he had guessed that their Cissie was up to something. And then she had said that William was to come and live at the mill and Joe was to take William's house, also that she was willing the mill, its freehold and business over to them jointly. This left Jimmy where he was and in a much poorer position; so, to level things out, she was passing on to Jimmy the Newcastle property, and at this Jimmy had exclaimed, "Oh nol No, Cissie." And she had silenced him.

The other property that Matthew had accumulated she was dividing among Mary, Bella, and Annie, but Bella's share, she had added with a tight grin, would be doled out to her weekly. And the tension was broken by their laughing at this.

Incoherent and shy for once, they had pressed around her and kissed her; and Jimmy, the last to leave, had taken her hand and, his voice husky and his eyes misted, he had said, "Oh, our Cissie! Our Cissie.

God surely made you when he made little apples. "

The deep, sincere, and loving compliment brought her to tears, and she pushed at him, saying, "Get yourself away home and ask Ada would she like a new house built away from the shop." And at this he lifted his head and gaped at her and said, "Whati" Then grinning he added, "Now don't you put any ideas into her head; we're all right where we are."

As he was about to go out of the door she called to him softly, and when he came back she said, "You could, you know. Jimmy, build a nice little place, because that property in Newcastle has trebled over the years. It's in the best business part. It's worth nigh on ten thousand pounds."

She smiled as he slowly brought his hand up to his mouth and pressed it hard, and again he said, "Oh, our Cissie."

Everything was settled. She was about to start a new life, and she was free and strangely excited . like a girl about to be married.

She had driven in the gig from "the house" to the city. She was to meet Annie at the "Band Box," do some shopping with her, then bring her back to the house to tea.

She found the city more than unusually crowded that day, and at the top of the Groat Market she decided to make a detour to West gate Road and enter Collingwood Street from there. But when she turned into a side street, which was mostly taken up with large offices, she found a number of carriages drawn up to the kerb, leaving very little room for her passage. And when, about half-way down the street, she saw coming towards her at a good pace a coach and four, she hastily drew her horse into a space between what was obviously a hired coach and one which was more obviously still a private carriage.

At the moment the coach and four was galloping past her there emerged from the doorway opposite the private coach two gentlemen. One was fair and one was dark. The fair man crossing the pavement first glanced to the left of him and to a lady dressed in rose taffeta and wearing a hat of unusual shape and color, it being made of a soft, gauzy, green material, which contrasted strongly with her brown hair.

Cissie, her lower jaw hanging slightly, stared over the distance at the fair man, as he did at her, and her eyes, still seeming to hold his, took in the figure of the young man at his side. They were both of a like height but the contrast in their coloring was sharp. A second before she jerked on the reins she let her gaze fall fully on the younger man, and it was like looking into her own eyes. She brought the horse sharply round and into the clear way again.

He was home! Well, hadn't she guessed he would come home when his father died? It was ten days since she read in the paper of Lord Fischel's death, and four days ago she had been tempted to go to the funeral, at least to view it from a distance because she felt a peculiar sorrow at his passing--he, even more than his son, seemed to have guided her life--but it was the fear of this very encounter that had dissuaded her.