"Your manner," said the married daughter, "is strange. Quite authoritative for your position!" She rose. "You'll find it helpful to be less haughty when you speak, less opinionated; your manner is very much against you. Oh, my word! no violence, if you please, miss!"
"Violence?" gasped Mary; "I'm not violent. It was my last hope, that's all, and it's over. I wish you good-day."
So much had happened in a few minutes—inside and out—that the roads were whitening rapidly and the flutter of snow had developed into a steady fall. At first she was scarcely sensible of it; the anger in her heart kept the cold out, and carried her along in a semi-rush. Words broke from her breathlessly. She felt that she had fallen from a high estate; that the independence of her life with Carew had been a period of dignity and power; that erstwhile she could have awed the dull-witted philistine who had humbled her. "The hateful woman! Oh, the wretch! To have to sue to a creature like that!" Well, she would starve now, she supposed, her excitement spending itself. She would die of starvation, like characters in fiction, or the people one read of in the newspapers; the newspapers called it "exposure," but it was the same thing; "exposure" sounded less offensive to the other people who read about it, that was all. The force of education is so strong that, much as she insisted on such a death, and close as she had approached to it, she was unable to realise its happening to her. She told herself that it must; the world was of a sudden horribly wide and empty; but for Mary Brettan actually to die like that had an air of exaggeration about it still. Pushing forward, she pondered on it, and the fact came close; the sensation of the world's widening about her grew stronger. She felt alone in the midst of illimitable space. There seemed nothing around her, nothing tangible, nothing to catch at. O God! how tired she was! she couldn't go on much further.
The snow whirled against her in gusts, clinging to her hair, and filling her eyes and nostrils. Exhaustion was overpowering her. And still how many miles? Each of the benches that she passed was a fresh temptation; and at last she dropped on one, too tired to stand, wet and shivering, and shielding her face from the storm.
She dropped on it like any tramp or stray. Having held out to the uttermost, she did not know whether she would ever get up again—did not think about it, and did not care. Her limbs ached for relief, and she seized it on the high-road because relief on the high-road was the only kind attainable.
And it was while she cowered there that another figure appeared in the twilight, the figure of a tall old man carrying a black bag. He came smartly down a footpath, gazing to right and left as for something that should be waiting for him. Not seeing it, he whistled, and Mary looked up. A trap was backed from the corner of the road. Then the man with the bag stared at her, and after an instant of hesitation, he spoke.
"It's a dirty nicht," he said, "for ye tae be sittin' there. I'm thinking ye're no' weel?"
"Not very," she said.
He inspected her undecidedly.
"An' ye'll tak' your death o' cold if ye dinna get up, it's verra certain. Hoots! ye're shakin' wi' it noo! Bide a wee, an' I'll put some warmth intae ye, young leddy."