door, and looked in. She was apparently asleep, and the child beside her.
The room struck cold, and, by a candle in a basin, he saw that it was
littered from end to end with the contents of two or three trunks that
were standing open. The furniture was no less scanty and poor than in the
sitting-rooms, and the high panelled walls closing in upon the bed gave a
dungeonlike aspect to the room.

A momentary pity for his wife, brought to this harsh Cumbrian spot, from
the flowers and sun, the Bacchic laughter and colour of a Tuscan vintage,
shot through Melrose. But his will silenced it. "She will get used to
it," he said to himself again, with dry determination. Then he turned on
his heel. The untidiness of his wife's room, her lack of method and
charm, and the memory of her peevishness on the journey disgusted him.
There was a bed in his dressing-room; and he was soon soundly asleep
there.

But his wife was not asleep, and she had been well aware of his presence
on her threshold. While he stood there, she had held her breath,
"willing" him to go away again; possessed by a silent passion of rage and
repulsion. When he closed the door behind him, she lay wide awake,
trembling at all the night sounds in the house, lost in a thousand
terrors and wild regrets.

Suddenly, with a crash the casement window at the farther end of the room
burst open under an onset of wind, Netta only just stifled the scream on
her lips. She sat up, her teeth chattering. It was _awful_; but she must
get up and shut it. Shivering, she crept out of bed, threw a shawl round
her, and made one flight across the floor, possessed with a mad alarm
lest the candle, which was flickering in the draught, should go out, and
leave her in darkness.