I washed my face and hands in icy-cold water, and arranged my hair
as well as I could without the aid of a looking-glass, that being a
luxury not provided at Albury Lodge. The servant stood watching me
as I made this brief toilet, waiting to conduct me to the
schoolroom. I followed her, shivering as I went, to a great empty
room on the first floor. The holidays were not quite over, and none
of the pupils had as yet returned. There was an almost painful
neatness and bareness in place of the usual litter of books and
papers, and I could not help thinking that an apartment in a
workhouse would have looked quite as cheerful. Even the fire behind
the high wire guard seemed to burn in a different manner from all
home fires: a fact which I attributed then to some sympathetic
property in the coal, but which I afterwards found to be caused by a
plentiful admixture of coke; a slow sulky smoke went up from the
dull mass of fuel, brightened ever so little now and then by a
sickly yellow flame. One jet of gas dimly lighted this long dreary
room, in which there was no human creature but myself and my guide.

'I'll bring you some supper presently, miss,' the housemaid said,
and departed before I could put in a timid plea for that feminine
luxury, a cup of tea.

I had not expected to find myself quite alone on this first night of
my arrival, and a feeling of hopeless wretchedness came over me as I
sat down at one end of a long green-baize-covered table, and rested
my head upon my folded arms. Of course it was very weak and foolish,
a bad beginning of my new life, but I was quite powerless to contend
against that sense of utter misery. I thought of all I had left at
home. I thought of what my life might have been if my father had
been only a little better off: and then I burst out crying as if my