Towards dusk, that same evening, Charlotte East went over to Mrs. Buffle's for some butter. After she was served, Mrs. Buffle—who was a little of a woman, with a red nose—crossed her arms upon the counter and her face towards Charlotte's. "Have you heered the news?" asked she. "Mary Ann Cross is going to make a match of it with Ben Tyrrett."  
"Is she?" said Charlotte. "They had better wait a few years, both of them, until they shall have put by something."
 
"They're neither of them of the putting-by sort," returned Mrs. Buffle. "Them Crosses is the worst girls to spend in all the Fair: unless it's Carry Mason. She don't spare her back, she don't. The wonder is, how she gets it."
 
"Young girls will dress," observed Charlotte, carelessly.
 
Mrs. Buffle laughed. "You speak as if you were an old one."
 
"I feel like one sometimes, Mrs. Buffle. When children are left, as I and Robert were, with a baby brother to bring up, and hardly any means to do it upon, it helps to steady them. Tom——"
 
Eliza Tyrrett burst in at the door, with a violence that made its bell twang and . "Half-a-pound o' dips, long-tens, Buffle, and be quick about it," was her order. "There's such a flare-up, in at Mason's."
 
"A flare-up!" repeated Mrs. Buffle, who was always ripe and ready for a dish of scandal, whether it touched on domestic differences, or on young girls' in the shape of dress. "Is Mason and her having a noise?"
 
"It's not him and her. It's about Carry. Hetty Mason locked Carry up this afternoon, and Mason never came home at all to tea; he went and had some beer instead, and a turn at skittles, and she wouldn't let Carry out. He came in just now, and his wife told him a whole heap about Carry, and Mason went up to the cock-loft, the door, and threatened to kick Carry down. They're having it out in the kitchen, all three."
 
"What has Carry done?" asked Mrs. Buffle eagerly.
 
"Perhaps Charlotte East can tell," said Eliza Tyrrett, slyly. "She has been thick with Carry lately. I am not a-going to spoil sport."
 
Charlotte took up her butter, and bending a severe look of caution on the Tyrrett girl, left the shop. Anthony Dare's reputation was not a brilliant one, and the bare fact of Caroline Mason's allowing herself to walk with him would have damaged her in the eyes of Honey Fair. As well keep it, if possible, from Mrs. Buffle and other gossips.
 
As Charlotte crossed to her own door, she became conscious that some one was flying towards her in the dusk of the evening: a woman with a fleet foot and panting breath. Charlotte caught hold of her. "Caroline, where are you going?"
 
"Let me alone, Charlotte East"—and Caroline's were working, her eyes flashing. "I have left their house for ever, and am going to one who will give me a better."
 
Charlotte held her tight. "You must not go, Caroline."
 
"I will," she answered. "I have chosen my lot this night for better or for worse. Will I stay to be without a cause? To be told I am what I am not? No! If anything should happen to me, let them reproach themselves, for they have driven me on to it."
 
Charlotte tried her utmost to restrain the wild girl. "Caroline," she urged, "this is the turning-point in your life. A step forward, and you may have passed it beyond recall; a step , and you may be saved for ever. Come home with me."
 
Caroline in her madness—it was little else—turned her ghastly face upon Charlotte. "You shan't stop me, Charlotte East! You go your way, and I'll go mine. Shall Mark and she go on at me without cause, I say, calling me false names?"
 
"Come home with me, Caroline. You shall stay with me to-night; you shan't go back to Hetty. My bed's not large, but it will hold us."
 
"I won't, I won't!" she uttered, struggling to be free.
 
"Only for a minute," Charlotte. "Come in for a minute until you are calm. You are mad just now."
 
"I am driven to it. There!"
 
With a jerk she herself from Charlotte's grasp, passion giving her strength: and she flew onwards and was lost in the dark night. Charlotte East ran home. Her brothers were there. "Tom," said she, "put this butter in the cupboard for me;" and out she went again. At the end of Honey Fair, a road lay each way. Which should she take? Which had Caroline taken?
 
She chose the one to the right—it was the most —and went groping about it for twenty minutes. As it happened, as such things generally do happen, Caroline had taken the other.
 
In a sheltered part of that, which lay back, away from the glare of the gas lamps, Caroline had taken refuge. She had expected some one would be there to meet her; but she found herself mistaken. Down she sat on a stone, and her wild passion began to diminish.
 
Nearly half an hour afterwards, Charlotte found her there. Caroline was talking to Anthony Dare, who had just come up. Charlotte grasped Caroline.
 
"You must come with me, Caroline."
 
"Who on earth are you, and what do you want here?" demanded Anthony Dare, turning round with a fierce stare on Charlotte.
 
"I am Charlotte East, sir, if it is any matter to you to know my name, and I am a friend of Caroline Mason's. I am here to take her out of harm's way."
 
"There's nothing to harm her here," answered young Anthony. "Mind your own business."
 
"I am afraid there is one thing to harm her, sir, and that's you," said brave Charlotte. "You can't come among us people in Honey Fair for any good. Folks bent on good errands don't need to wait till dark before they pay their visits. You had better give up prowling about this place, Mr. Anthony Dare. Stay with your equals, sir; with those that will be a match for you."
 
"The woman must be !" uttered Anthony, going into a terrible passion. "How dare you presume to say such things to me?"
 
"How dare you, sir, set yourself out to work ill?" retorted Charlotte. "Come along, Caroline," she added to the girl, who was now crying bitterly. "As for you, sir, if you mean no harm, as you say, and it is necessary that you should to visit Honey Fair, please to pay your visits in the broad light of day."
 
No very pleasant word broke from A............