“If she had been in this other girl's niche,” he said, “if she had lived the life of this Anice——”
But he did not finish his sentence. Something, not many yards beyond him, caught his eye—a figure seated upon the road-side near a collier's cottage—evidently a pit girl in some trouble, for her head was bowed upon her hands, and there was a dogged sort of misery expressed in her very posture.
“A woman,” he said aloud. “What woman, I wonder. This is not the time for any woman to be sitting here alone.”
He crossed the road at once, and going to the girl, touched her lightly on the shoulder.
“My lass,” he said good-naturedly, “what ails you?”
She raised her head slowly as if she were dizzy and bewildered. Her face was disfigured by a bruise, and on one temple was a cut from which the blood trickled down her cheek; but the moonlight showed him that it was Joan. He removed his hand from her shoulder and drew back a pace.
“You have been hurt!” he exclaimed.
“Aye,” she answered deliberately, “I've had a hurt—a bad un.”
He did not ask her how she had been hurt. He knew as well as if she had told him, that it had been done in one of her father's fits of drunken passion. He had seen this sort of thing before during his sojourn in the mining districts. But, shamefully repulsive as it had been to him, he had never felt the degradation of it as fiercely as he did now.
“You are Joan Lowrie?” he said.