She resumed her way more slowly.  She had only stopped because, though burned with the desire to see him, she yet had an instinct to postpone the encounter.  She was almost minded to return.  But she went on.  The town was really very near.  The illuminated clock of the Town Hall had dominion over it; the golden shimmer above the roofs to the left indicated the electrical splendour of the new Cinema in Moorthorne Road next to the new Primitive Methodist Chapel.  He had told her about that, too.  In two minutes, in less than two minutes, she was among houses again, and approaching the corner of Friendly Street.  He would come from the Moorthorne Road end of Friendly Street.  She would peep round the corner of Friendly Street to see if he was coming....

But before she reached the corner, her escapade suddenly presented itself to her as childish madness, silly, inexcusable; and she thought self-reproachfully, “How impulsive I am!” and sharply turned back towards Mrs. Maldon’s house, which seemed to be about ten miles off.

A moment later she heard hurried footfalls behind her on the narrow brick pavement, and, after one furtive glance over her shoulder, she quickened her pace.  Louis Fores in all his elegance was pursuing her!  Nothing had happened to him.  He was not ill; he was merely a little late!  After all, she would sit by his side at the supper-table!  She had a spasm of shame that was excruciating.  But at the same time she was wildly glad.  And already this inebriating illusion of an ingenuous girl concerning a common male was helping to shape monstrous events.

CHAPTER II

LOUIS’ DISCOVERY

I

Louis Fores was late at his grand-aunt’s because he had by a certain preoccupation, during a period of about an hour, been rendered oblivious of the passage of time.  The real origin of the affair went back nearly sixty years, to an indecorous episode in the history of the Maldon family.

At that date—­before Mrs. Maldon had even met Austin Maldon, her future husband—­Austin’s elder brother Athelstan, who was well established as an earthenware broker in London, had a conjugal misfortune, which reached its climax in the Matrimonial Court, and left the injured and stately Athelstan with an incomplete household, a spoiled home, and the sole care of two children, a boy and a girl.  These children were, almost of necessity, clumsily brought up.  The girl married the half-brother of a Lieutenant-General Fores, and Louis Fores was their son.  The boy married an American girl, and had issue, Julian Maldon and some daughters.