pressing upon her like heavy fever-laden vapours, and perverting the very plenitude of her nature into a deeper source of disease.  Her wretchedness had been a perpetually tightening instrument of torture, which had gradually absorbed all the other sensibilities of her nature into the sense of pain and the maddened craving for relief.  Oh, if some ray of hope, of pity, of consolation, would pierce through the horrible gloom, she might believe then in a Divine love—­in a heavenly Father who cared for His children!  But now she had no faith, no trust.  There was nothing she could lean on in the wide world, for her mother was only a fellow-sufferer in her own lot.  The poor patient woman could do little more than mourn with her daughter:  she had humble resignation enough to sustain her own soul, but she could no more give comfort and fortitude to Janet, than the withered ivy-covered trunk can bear up its strong, full-boughed offspring crashing down under an Alpine storm.  Janet felt she was alone:  no human soul had measured her anguish, had understood her self-despair, had entered into her sorrows and her sins with that deep-sighted sympathy which is wiser than all blame, more potent than all reproof—­such sympathy as had swelled her own heart for many a sufferer.  And if there was any Divine Pity, she could not feel it; it kept aloof from her, it poured no balm into her wounds, it stretched out no hand to bear up her weak resolve, to fortify her fainting courage.

Now, in her utmost loneliness, she shed no tear:  she sat staring fixedly into the darkness, while inwardly she gazed at her own past, almost losing the sense that it was her own, or that she was anything more than a spectator at a strange and dreadful play.

The loud sound of the church clock, striking one, startled her.  She had not been there more than half an hour, then?  And it seemed to her as if she had been there half the night.  She was getting benumbed with cold.  With that strong instinctive dread of pain and death which had made her recoil from suicide, she started up, and the disagreeable sensation of resting on her benumbed feet helped to recall her completely to the sense of the present.  The wind was beginning to make rents in the clouds, and there came every now and then a dim light of stars that frightened her more than the darkness; it was like a cruel finger pointing her out in her wretchedness and humiliation; it made her shudder at the thought of the morning twilight.  What could she do?  Not go to her mother—­not rouse her in the dead of night to tell her this.  Her mother would think she was a spectre; it would be enough to kill her with horror.  And the way there was so long ... if she should meet some one ... yet she must seek some shelter, somewhere to hide herself.  Five doors off there was Mrs. Pettifer’s; that kind woman would take her in.  It was of no use now to be proud and mind about the world’s knowing:  she had nothing to wish for, nothing to care about; only she could not help shuddering at the thought of braving the morning light, there in the street—­she was frightened at the thought of spending long hours in the cold.  Life might mean anguish, might mean despair; but oh, she must clutch it, though with bleeding fingers; her feet must cling to the firm earth that the sunlight would revisit, not slip into the untried abyss, where she might long even for familiar pains.