that she sometimes cast on my uncle, she left me. Dear Martha! she had
the lovely gift of leaving alone. That evening there was no tea in the
house; Martha did not have any.

With the conceit peculiar to repentance and humiliation, I took a curious
satisfaction in being hard on myself. I could have taken my meal
tolerably well: with the new hope in my uncle as my saviour, came comfort
enough for the natural process of getting hungry, and desiring food; but
with common, indeed vulgar foolishness, my own righteousness in taking
vengeance on my fault was a satisfaction to me. I did not then see the
presumption of the sinner's taking vengeance on her own fault, did not
see that I had no right to do that. For how should a thing defiled
punish? With all my great joy in the discovery that the fault was against
my uncle, I forgot that therefore I was in his jurisdiction, that he only
had to deal with it, he alone could punish, as he alone could forgive it.

It was the end of August, and the night stole swiftly upon the day. It
began to grow very dusk, but I would not stir. I and the cabinet kept
each other dismal company while the gloom deepened into night. Nor did
the night part us, for I and the cabinet filled all the darkness. Had my
uncle remained the whole night away, I believe I should have sat till he
came. But, happily both for my mental suffering and my bodily endurance,
he returned sooner than many a time. I heard the house-door open. I knew
he would come to the study before going to his bedroom, and my heart gave
a bound of awe-filled eagerness. I knew also that Martha never spoke to
him when he returned from one of his late rambles, and that he would not
know I was there: long before she died Martha knew how grateful he was
for her delicate consideration. Martha Moon was not one of this world's
ladies; but there is a country where the social question is not, "Is she
a lady?" but, "How much of a woman is she?" Martha's name must, I think,