Hilary was not ashamed:—­not even now, when hers smote sharper and harder than it had ever done at Stowbury.  She felt it a sore thing enough; but it never humiliated nor angered her.  Either she was too proud or not proud enough; but her low estate always seemed to her too simply external a thing to affect her relations with the world outside.  She never thought of being annoyed with the shopkeeper, who, though he trusted her with the sixpence, carefully took down her name and address:  still less to suspecting the old lady opposite, who sat and listened to the transaction—­apparently a well-to-do customer, clad in a rich black silk and handsome sable furs—­of looking down upon her and despising her.  She herself never despised any body, except for wickedness.

So she waited contentedly, neither thinking of herself, nor of what others thought of her; but with her mind quietly occupied by the two thoughts, which in any brief space of rest always recurred, calming down all annoyances, and raising her above the level of petty pains—­Johanna and Robert Lyon.  Under the influence of these her tired face grew composed, and there was a wishful, far away, fond look in her eyes, which made it not wonderful that the said old lady—­apparently an acute old soul in her way—­should watch her, as we do occasionally watch strangers in whom we have become suddenly interested.

There is no accounting for these interests, or to the events to which they give rise.  Sometimes they are pooh-pooh-ed as “romantic,” “unnatural,” “like a bit in a novel;” and yet they are facts continually occurring, especially to people of quick intuition, observation, and sympathy.  Nay, even the most ordinary people have known or heard of such, resulting in mysterious, life-long loves; firm friendships; strange yet often wonderful happy marriages; sudden revolutions of fortune and destiny:  things utterly unaccountable for, except by the belief in the inscrutable Providence which

    “Shapes our ends,
     Rough-how them as we will.”

When Hilary left the shop she was startled by a voice at her elbow.

“I beg your pardon, but if your way lies up Southampton Row, would you object to give an old woman a share of that capital umbrella of yours?”

“With pleasure,” Hilary answered, though the oddness of the request amused her.  And it was granted really with pleasure; for the old lady spoke with those “accents of the mountain tongue” which this foolish Hilary never recognized without a thrill at the heart.

“May be you think an old woman ought to take a cab, and not be intruding upon strangers; but I am hale and hearty, and being only a streets length from my own door, I dislike to waste unnecessary shillings.”

“Certainly,” acquiesced Hilary, with a half sigh:  shillings were only too precious to her.

“I saw you in the boot shop, and you seemed the sort of young lady who would do a kindness to an old body like me; so I said to myself, ‘Ill ask her.’”