or in sitting at home reading Bancroft's History of the United States
and the speeches of Daniel Webster.

Since the day when Charity had told him that she wished to succeed
to Eudora Skeff's post their relations had undefinably but definitely
changed. Lawyer Royall had kept his word. He had obtained the place for
her at the cost of considerable maneuvering, as she guessed from the
number of rival candidates, and from the acerbity with which two of
them, Orma Fry and the eldest Targatt girl, treated her for nearly a
year afterward. And he had engaged Verena Marsh to come up from
Creston and do the cooking. Verena was a poor old widow, doddering and
shiftless: Charity suspected that she came for her keep. Mr. Royall was
too close a man to give a dollar a day to a smart girl when he could
get a deaf pauper for nothing. But at any rate, Verena was there, in the
attic just over Charity, and the fact that she was deaf did not greatly
trouble the young girl.

Charity knew that what had happened on that hateful night would not
happen again. She understood that, profoundly as she had despised Mr.
Royall ever since, he despised himself still more profoundly. If she had
asked for a woman in the house it was far less for her own defense than
for his humiliation. She needed no one to defend her: his humbled pride
was her surest protection. He had never spoken a word of excuse
or extenuation; the incident was as if it had never been. Yet its
consequences were latent in every word that he and she exchanged, in
every glance they instinctively turned from each other. Nothing now
would ever shake her rule in the red house.

On the night of her meeting with Miss Hatchard's cousin Charity lay in
bed, her bare arms clasped under her rough head, and continued to think