profitless investment, and revenge a ruinous speculation. But when women
are thoroughly depraved and hardened, nine times out of ten it is hatred
or revenge that makes them so. Arabella Crane had not, however, attained
to that last state of wickedness, which, consistent in evil, is callous
to remorse; she was not yet unsexed. In her nature was still that
essence, "varying and mutable," which distinguishes woman while womanhood
is left to her. And now, as she sat gazing on the throng below, her
haggard mind recoiled perhaps from the conscious shadow of the Evil
Principle which, invoked as an ally, remains as a destroyer. Her dark
front relaxed; she moved in her seat uneasily. "Must it be always thus?"
she muttered,--"always this hell here! Even now, if in one large pardon
I could include the undoer, the earth, myself, and again be human,--
human, even as those slight triflers or coarse brawlers that pass yonder!
Oh, for something in common with common life!"

Her lips closed, and her eyes again fell upon the crowded street. At
that moment three or four heavy vans or wagons filled with operatives or
labourers and their wives, coming back from the race-course, obstructed
the way; two outriders in satin jackets were expostulating, cracking
their whips, and seeking to clear space for an open carriage with four
thoroughbred impatient horses. Towards that carriage every gazer from
the windows was directing eager eyes; each foot-passenger on the pavement
lifted his hat: evidently in that carriage some great person! Like all
who are at war with the world as it is, Arabella Crane abhorred the
great, and despised the small for worshipping the great. But still her
own fierce dark eyes mechanically followed those of the vulgar. The
carriage bore a marquess's coronet on its panels, and was filled with
ladies; two other carriages bearing a similar coronet, and evidently
belonging to the same party, were in the rear. Mrs. Crane started. In
that first carriage, as it now slowly moved under her very window, and