She entered the drawing-room with a slow, careless, yet stately step, which belonged to her, I can not say by nature, for it was not natural, but by ancestry.
She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a low, soft, shiny chair almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed listlessly into the fire.

In a minute she rose and rang the bell.
"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.
The woman came.
"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet ?" she asked.
"No, ma'am." "Let her know I am in the drawing-room." This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.
There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a reflector, and there was not much behind the eyes that looked into it for that fire to reflect.

Hesper was no dreamer--the more was the pity, for dreams are often the stuff out of which actions are made.

Had she been a truer woman, she might have been a dreamer, but where was the space for dreaming in a life like hers, without heaven, therefore without horizon, with so much room for desiring, and so little room for hope?
The buz that greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy she knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence.

And even upon these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of having a husband.