Aunt Anne, Volume 2 by W.K. Clifford — Read

AUNT ANNE went slowly along Portman Square. She felt, and it was a cruel moment to do so, that she was growing very old. Her feet almost gave way beneath her; her hands had barely strength to hold her cloak together over her chest. There was a little cold breeze passing by; as it swept over her face she realized that she was half stunned and sad and sick at heart. But she dragged on, step by step, stopping once, to hold by the iron railings of a house, before she could find strength enough to turn into a side-street.

"I won't believe it," she said; "it was not for the money. He could not have known; his uncle would not have told him-it is not likely that he would have betrayed the confidence of a client. " And then she remembered what Sir William had said about the debt to the landlady in the Gray's Inn Road and to the mother in the country. Of course that meant Liphook. It gave her a world of comfort, had lifted a terrible dread from her heart, so that, even in spite of the insults of the last hour, she felt that her morning's visit had not been wholly thrown away. She had not the faculty of looking forward very far, and it did not occur to her as yet that, by revealing her marriage, she had ruined her prospects with her cousin. It was the insults that had enraged her; the going back to Witley, the day's dinner, and the very near future, that perplexed her. A month, even a week hence, might take care of itself, provided to-day were made easy; it had always been so with her.