It was the horror of that rapid flight of time, which seemed independent of her own life in its hideous swiftness.

Idle or busy, it was all the same.

The days would not linger for her; the dreaded 10th was close at hand.
Frank Randall was still in London, in that solicitor's office--a firm of some standing in the City--to which he had gone on leaving his father.

He had written two or three times to Ellen since he left Hampshire, and she had answered his letters secretly; but pleasant though it was to her to hear from him, she begged him not to write, as her father's anger would be extreme if a letter should by any evil chance fall into his hands.

So within the last few months there had been no tidings of Ellen's absent lover, and the girl was glad that it was so.