Betwixt the cold sun and the hard earth, a dust-befogged wind, plainly borrowed from March, was sweeping the street.
Mr.and Mrs.Redmain had returned to town thus early because their country-place was in Cornwall, and there Mr.Redmain was too far from his physician.

He was now considerably better, however, and had begun to go about again, for the weather did not yet affect him much.

He was now in his study, as it was called, where he generally had his breakfast alone.

Mrs.Redmain always had hers in bed, as often with a new novel as she could, of which her maid cut the leaves, and skimmed the cream.

But now she was descending the stair, straight as a Greek goddess, and about as cold as the marble she is made of--mentally rigid, morally imperturbable, and vacant of countenance to a degree hardly equaled by the most ordinary of goddesses.