That might easily be. For of all solitary places Sansome Walk was, in those days, the dreariest, especially portions of it. What with the overhanging horse-chestnut trees, and the high dead wall behind those on the one hand, and the flat stretch of lonely fields on the other, Sansome Walk was what Harry Parker used to call a caution. You might pass through all its long length from end to end and never meet a soul.
Taking that narrow by-path on my way back that leads into the Tything by St. Oswald’s Chapel, and whistling a bar of the sweet song I had heard at the theatre overnight, “There’s nothing half so sweet in life as love’s young dream,” some one came swiftly advancing down the same narrow path, and I prepared to back sideways to give her room to pass—a young woman, with a large shabby shawl on, and the remains of faded gentility about her.
It was Lucy Bird! As she drew near, lifting her sad sweet eyes to mine with a mournful smile, my heart gave a great throb of pity. Faded, worn, anxious, reduced!—oh, how unlike she was, poor girl, to the once gay and charming Lucy Ashton!
“Why, Lucy! I did not expect to see you in Worcester! We heard you had left it months ago.”
“Yes, we left last February for London,” she answered. “Captain Bird has only come down for the races.”
As she took her hand from under her shawl to respond to mine, I saw that she was carrying some cheese and a paper of cold cooked meat. She must have been buying the meat at the cook’s shop, as the Worcester people called it, which was in the middle of High Street. Oh! what a change—what a change for the delicately-bred Lucy Ashton! Better that her Master of Ravenswood had buried his horse and himself in the flooded land, as the other one did, than have brought her to this.
“Where are you going to, down this dismal place, Lucy?”
“Home,” she answered. “We have taken lodgings at the top of Sansome Walk.”
“At one of the cottages a little beyond it?”