Mr. Till Boldero’s kindness was then redoubled.  “You can do nothing for him now,” he said.  “Tell me your wishes about the funeral.  I will arrange everything.  Go back to your sister to-night.  She will be nervous about you.  And return tomorrow or the day after. ...  No!  It’s no trouble, I assure you!”

She yielded.

Thus towards eight o’clock, when Sophia had eaten a little under Mr. Boldero’s superintendence, and the pawnshop was shut up, the motor-car started again for Bursley, Lily Holl being beside her lover and Sophia alone in the body of the car.  Sophia had told them nothing of the nature of her mission.  She was incapable of talking to them.  They saw that she was in a condition of serious mental disturbance.  Under cover of the noise of the car, Lily said to Dick that she was sure Mrs. Scales was ill, and Dick, putting his lips together, replied that he meant to be in King Street at nine-thirty at the latest.  From time to time Lily surreptitiously glanced at Sophia—­a glance of apprehensive inspection, or smiled at her silently; and Sophia vaguely responded to the smile.

In half an hour they had escaped from the ring of Manchester and were on the county roads of Cheshire, polished, flat, sinuous.  It was the season of the year when there is no night—­only daylight and twilight; when the last silver of dusk remains obstinately visible for hours.  And in the open country, under the melancholy arch of evening, the sadness of the earth seemed to possess Sophia anew.  Only then did she realize the intensity of the ordeal through which she was passing.

To the south of Congleton one of the tyres softened, immediately after Dick had lighted his lamps.  He stopped the car and got down again.  They were two miles Astbury, the nearest village.  He had just, with the resignation of experience, reached for the tool-bag, when Lily exclaimed:  “Is she asleep, or what?” Sophia was not asleep, but she was apparently not conscious.

It was a difficult and a trying situation for two lovers.  Their voices changed momentarily to the tone of alarm and consternation, and then grew firm again.  Sophia showed life but not reason.  Lily could feel the poor old lady’s heart.

“Well, there’s nothing for it!” said Dick, briefly, when all their efforts failed to rouse her.

“What—­shall you do?”

“Go straight home as quick as I can on three tyres.  We must get her over to this side, and you must hold her.  Like that we shall keep the weight off the other side.”

He pitched back the tool-bag into its box.  Lily admired his decision.

It was in this order, no longer under the spell of the changing beauty of nocturnal landscapes, that they finished the journey.  Constance had opened the door before the car came to a stop in the gloom of King Street.  The young people considered that she bore the shock well, though the carrying into the house of Sophia’s inert, twitching body, with its hat forlornly awry, was a sight to harrow a soul sturdier than Constance.