heels, then stopped with the same grotesque coquetry.

"She's a funny old thing, isn't she?" said the Matron to Anne. "She
gives us many a laugh."

"It's too humbling to look at. I cannot laugh," said Anne. "Poor old
thing, to have come to that."


"She doesn't know, you know," said the Matron. "You're wasting your
pity. They're most of them better off in the infirmary here than they
were outside. You've no idea what a dirty state _she_ was found in for
one."

"It's the painfulness of such a sight--age without honour," repeated
Anne.

"I've no time to think of that sort of thing," replied the Matron, as
they began to ascend the wide stairs to the bed rooms, a woman, who was
scrubbing the steps with sand, standing aside to let them pass.

Several women were sitting up in bed, with starched night-caps nodding
at different angles. Over the fireplace was a lithograph of Queen
Victoria giving the Bible as the source of England's greatness to an
Indian potentate, and beneath it, sitting very still in a large
armchair, was Jane Evans staring into the fire. She was very quiet,
broken, and helplessly docile. Her stillness was alarming. She seemed to
be already dead in spirit. Even the child soon to be separated from her
scarcely concerned her. She was quite neat. Thin and fatigued as her
face was, she did not appear to have suffered greatly in health.