As he stood there absorbed in thought the sound of rapid footsteps echoed down the steep road from Dinas and, not wishing to be seen, he stepped back at once into the shadow of a tree that overhung the bridge. Looking up the roadway he saw a woman's figure. She was running swiftly with a curious unevenness, a curious uncertainty, yet evidently with some set purpose. As she passed him he caught a glimpse of her face, and--mere hive of atoms though he was--he started after her in a second.
None too soon either! He had just had hold of her in time, as she wavered for an instant on the parapet.
"You young fool!" he said roughly. "What's the matter? What are you doing that for?"
The girl--she did not look more than twenty--stared at him vacantly as if she did not understand what he meant, then with a little cry of horror apparently at herself, covered her face with her hands, and crouched down beneath his touch in a perfect storm of sobs.
"Don't cry!" he said more kindly, "What is it all about? What were you going to do?"
"I--I don't know," she wept. "It--it came upon me suddenly that it was the only way--it swept me off my feet--oh! wicked, wicked girl that I am--if--if it hadn't been for you--Oh! what shall I do? What shall I do?"
"What's wrong?" he asked, impatient at her helpless emotion. "Anything I can help? Come! it's no use crying. Of course you're a wicked girl, but as you evidently don't really want to kill yourself you'll have to live. So you had better make a clean breast of it. I daresay I can help--if it isn't----" Her face looked innocent and pure, still one never could tell. "Come--out with it"--he went on--"If it's anything about money----"
She caught at the word. "Money! Oh! if I could only get the money," she wailed.
"Come!" he said with a smile, "if it is only money----"
So by degrees she told him her name was Alicia Edwards. She was the happiest, luckiest girl in the world, who was to be married in two days to the man she loved--to a saint upon earth. And she bore an unblemished character. And her father was also a saint upon earth. But that very evening by the post had come--not a bolt from the blue--for she had had an awful prescience that it would come, though who would have thought that Myfanwy would be so cruel, and she just married to the man she loved! Oh! it was wicked! A bill, and such a bill too! A hundred and three pounds; and if it was not paid for at once it would be sent. Oh! she would go mad with shame.