“I shall have to find a new place,” she kept saying.  “I shall have to go among quite strange people.”

She had suddenly a new sense of being without resource.  That was one of the proofs of the curious heaviness of the blow the simple occurrence was to her.  She felt temporarily almost as if there were no other lodging-houses in London, though she knew that really there were tens of thousands.  The fact was that though there might be other Cupps, or their counterparts, she could not make herself believe such a good thing possible.  She had been physically worn out before she had read the letter, and its effect had been proportionate to her fatigue and lack of power to rebound.  She was vaguely surprised to feel that the tears kept filling her eyes and falling on her cheeks in big heavy drops.  She was obliged to use her handkerchief frequently, as if she was suddenly developing a cold in her head.

“I must take care,” she said once, quite prosaically, but with more pathos in her voice than she was aware of, “or I shall make my nose quite red.”

[Illustration:  The Marquis of Walderhurst]

Though Batch was able to supply fish, he was unfortunately not able to send it to Mallowe.  His cart had gone out on a round just before Miss Fox-Seton’s arrival, and there was no knowing when it would return.

“Then I must carry the fish myself,” said Emily.  “You can put it in a neat basket.”

“I’m very sorry, miss; I am, indeed, miss,” said Batch, looking hot and pained.

“It will not be heavy,” returned Emily; “and her ladyship must be sure of it for the dinner-party.”

So she turned back to recross the moor with a basket of fish on her arm.  And she was so pathetically unhappy that she felt that so long as she lived the odour of fresh fish would make her feel sorrowful.  She had heard of people who were made sorrowful by the odour of a flower or the sound of a melody but in her case it would be the smell of fresh fish that would make her sad.  If she had been a person with a sense of humour, she might have seen that this was thing to laugh at a little.  But she was not a humorous woman, and just now——­

“Oh, I shall have to find a new place,” she was thinking, “and I have lived in that little room for years.”

The sun got hotter and hotter, and her feet became so tired that she could scarcely drag one of them after another.  She had forgotten that she had left Mallowe before lunch, and that she ought to have got a cup of tea, at least, at Maundell.  Before she had walked a mile on her way back, she realised that she was frightfully hungry and rather faint.

“There is not even a cottage where I could get a glass of water,” she thought.