and she fled down the stairway and out into the darkness.

The child had not wakened. It was well that it had not looked upon such a
scene, even in utter ignorance of its meaning.


Chapter VIII. Holcroft's View of Matrimony

Holcroft was indeed very lonely as he drove through the bare March fields and
leafless woods on his way to town. The sky had clouded again, like his
prospects, and he had the dreary sense of desolation which overwhelms a quiet,
domestic man who feels that his home and all to which he clings are slipping
from him. His lot was hard enough at best, and he had a bitter sense of being
imposed upon and wronged by Lemuel Weeks. It was now evident enough that the
widow and her daughter had been an intolerable burden to his neighbor, who had
taken advantage of his need and induced him to assume the burden through false
representation. To a man of Holcroft's simple, straightforward nature, any
phase of trickery was intensely repugnant, and the fact that he had been
overreached in a matter relating to his dearest hopes galled him to the quick.
He possessed the strong common sense of his class; his wife had been like him
in this respect, and her influence had intensified the trait. Queer people
with abnormal manners excited his intense aversion. The most charitable view
that he could take of Mrs. Mumpson was that her mind--such as she had--was
unbalanced, that it was an impossibility for her to see any subject or duty in
a sensible light or its right proportions.

Her course, so prejudicial to her own interests, and her incessant and stilted
talk, were proof to his mind of a certain degree of insanity, and he had heard
that people in this condition often united to their unnatural ways a wonderful
degree of cunning. Her child was almost as uncanny as herself and gave him a