Once inside, she stood still and looked about her.
If there was silence and desolateness outside, there was within the
deserted place a stillness like the unresponse of death. It had been
long since anyone had lived in the cottage, but tramps or gipsies had
at times passed through it. Dead, blackened embers lay on the hearth, a
bundle of dried grass which had been slept on was piled in the corner,
an empty nail keg and a wooden box had been drawn before the big chimney
place for some wanderer to sit on when the black embers had been hot and
red.
Betty gave one glance around her and sat down upon the box standing on
the bare hearth, her head sinking forward, her hands falling clasped
between her knees, her eyes on the brick floor.
"Where is he now?" broke from her in a loud whisper, whose sound was
mechanical and hollow. "Where is he now?"
And she sat there without moving, while the grey mist from the marshes
crept close about the door and through it and stole about her feet.
So she sat long--long--in a heavy, far-off dream.
Along the road a man was riding with a lowering, fretted face. He had
come across country on horseback, because to travel by train meant
wearisome stops and changes and endlessly slow journeying, annoying
beyond endurance to those who have not patience to spare.
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