Anne, whose thoughts had been engrossed by a new opportunity for Mary, became aware of calamity of a new sort. She turned to the men.
"What has happened?" she asked, though even as she spoke she had grasped it all. The man, a young, fair-haired man of twenty-six, with great breadth of chest and long straight legs, answered with the willingness of a countryman to spread news.
"Why, that Richard Burton's gone bankrupt and made a bolt. They say it'll take the house as well as the horses to pay it all up. The bailiffs was in to-day as I passed taking it all down. It's a bad job for somebody, I heard," he said winking at the other man. He, glancing at Anne, looked embarrassed and pretended not to see.
"Can either of you tell me where the girl who was living there has gone?
Is she still there?" she asked the latter man.
"Not she!" answered the former.
"They say she walked in the night to Ashley Union," said the elder man.
"She's there now and nobody saw her go, so I suppose she must have done.
It's a good eight miles of a walk."
"Do her good," said the younger man; and they began to discuss the list and quality of the horses for sale.
Anne walked on. It had come then, and sooner than it was looked for. Jane's fancy-work and "lady-like" life seemed like the play-things of a baby by the side of a scaffold, as helpless and as foolish.
"I was going to the Union to-morrow anyway for Elizabeth Richardson," said Anne, as she unlocked her door, trying not to see Jane Evans walking all alone, with no new house or protector, through the darkness of which she was afraid, to the formidable iron gate of the Union.