same result as before. Then she went back despairingly to the back room
and her place beside the window. The night was starry and not very cold,
and to protect herself from the night air she put on her fur cape. Hour
after hour she listened to the bells of St. Matthew's chiming the
quarters, feeling a strange loneliness each time the chimes ceased; and
then, after a few minutes' time, beginning again to listen for the next
quarter. It was getting very late, and still no one came to her, not even
Rosie with her supper, which she had made up her mind not to touch. Then
she dropped her head on her hands, and cried quietly to herself. She had
so many thoughts, and each one seemed sadder than the last. For the great
tumult in her soul was over now, and she could think about it all, and of
all the individuals who had treated her cruelly. She felt very
differently towards them. Captain Horton she feared and hated, and wished
him dead with all her heart; and Rosie she also hated, but not so
intensely, for the maid's enmity had not injured her. Against Mary she
only felt a great anger, but no hatred; for Mary had been so kind, so
loving, and she could not forget that, and all the sweetness it had given
her life. Then she began to compare this new luxurious life in Dawson
Place to the old wretched life in Moon Street, which now seemed so far
back in time; and it seemed strange to her that, in spite of the great
difference, yet to-night she felt more unhappy than she had ever felt in
the old days. She remembered her poor degraded mother, who had never
turned against her, and cried quietly again, leaning her face on the
window-sill. Then she had a thought which greatly perplexed her, and she
asked herself why it was in those old days, when hard words and unjust
blows came to her, she only felt a fearful shrinking of the flesh, and
wished like some poor hunted animal to fly away and hide herself from her
tormentors, while now a spirit of resentment and rebellion was kindled in
her and burnt in her heart with a strange fire. Was it wrong to feel like
that, to wish that those who made her suffer were dead? That was a hard