Mrs. Turpin, without another word, took herself out of the room.

Save for that singular meeting on Miss Rodney's first night in the house,
Mr. Rawcliffe and the energetic lady had held no intercourse whatever.
Their parlours being opposite each other on the ground floor, they
necessarily came face to face now and then, but the High School mistress
behaved as though she saw no one, and the solicitor's clerk, after one or
two attempts at polite formality, adopted a like demeanour. The man's
proximity caused his neighbour a ceaseless irritation; of all objectionable
types of humanity, this loafing and boozing degenerate was, to Miss Rodney,
perhaps the least endurable; his mere countenance excited her animosity,
for feebleness and conceit, things abhorrent to her, were legible in every
line of the trivial features; and a full moustache, evidently subjected to
training, served only as emphasis of foppish imbecility. 'I could beat
him!' she exclaimed more than once within herself, overcome with
contemptuous wrath, when she passed Mr. Rawcliffe. And, indeed, had it
been possible to settle the matter thus simply, no doubt Mr. Rawcliffe's
rooms would very soon have been vacant.

The crisis upon which Miss Rodney had resolved came about, quite
unexpectedly, one Sunday evening. Mrs. Turpin and her daughters had gone,
as usual, to church, the carpenter had gone to smoke a pipe with a
neighbour, and Mr. Rawcliffe believed himself alone in the house. But Miss
Rodney was not at church this evening; she had a headache, and after tea
lay down in her bedroom for a while. Soon impatient of repose, she got up
and went to her parlour. The door, to her surprise, was partly open;
entering--the tread of her slippered feet was noiseless--she beheld an
astonishing spectacle. Before her writing-table, his back turned to her,
stood Mr. Rawcliffe, engaged in the deliberate perusal of a letter which he