The carpet was nearly threadbare, and the curtains of dark-red moreen were very dingy; the mirror over the chimney-piece seemed to have been made purposely to distort my features, and produce in me a feeling of depression.  My bedroom, which communicated with this agreeable sitting-room by folding-doors, was still smaller and gloomier; and opened upon a dismal back-yard, where a dog in a kennel howled dejectedly from time to time, and rattled his chain, as if to remind me that I was a prisoner like himself.  I had no books, no work, no music.  It was a dreary place to pass a dreary time in; and my only resource was to pace to and fro—­to and fro from one end to another of those wretched rooms.

I watched the day grow dusk, and then dark.  The rifts in the driving clouds were growing larger, and the edges were torn.  I left off roaming up and down my room, like some entrapped creature, and sank down on the floor by the window, looking out for the pale, sad blue of the sky which gleamed now and then through the clouds, till the night had quite set in.  I did not cry, for I am not given to overmuch weeping, and my heart was too sore to be healed by tears; neither did I tremble, for I held out my hand and arm to make sure they were steady; but still I felt as if I were sinking down—­down into an awful, profound despondency, from which I should never rally; it was all over with me.  I had nothing before me but to give up, and own myself overmatched and conquered.  I have a half-remembrance that as I crouched there in the darkness I sobbed once, and cried under my breath, “God help me!”

A very slight sound grated on my ear, and a fresh thrill of strong, resentful feeling quivered all through me; it was the hateful click of the key turning in the lock.  It gave me force enough to carry out my defiance a little longer.  Before the door could be opened I sprang to my feet, and stood erect, and outwardly very calm, gazing through the window, with my face turned away from the persons who were coming in; I was so placed that I could see them reflected in the mirror over the fireplace.  A servant came first, carrying in a tray, upon which were a lamp and my tea—­such a meal as might be prepared for a school-girl in disgrace.

She came up to me, as if to draw down the blinds and close the shutters.

“Leave them,” I said; “I will do it myself by-and-by.”

“He’s not coming home to-night,” said a woman’s voice behind me, in a scoffing tone.

I could see her too without turning round.  A handsome woman, with bold black eyes, and a rouged face, which showed coarsely in the ugly looking-glass.  She was extravagantly dressed, and wore a profusion of ornaments—­tawdry ones, mostly, but one or two I recognized as my own.  She was not many years older than myself.  I took no notice whatever of her, or her words, or her presence; but continued to gaze out steadily at the lamp-lit streets and stormy sky.  Her voice grew hoarse with passion, and I knew well how her face would burn and flush under the rouge.