A PLEASANT HERMITAGE When she awoke, it was with a sweet, languorous sense of perfect comfort.

Heavy-lidded, she glanced about her.

Ah! Once more she was in her own wide, gracious bed--of a different caste, of an entirely different race, from the second maid's paving-stone pallet, from that folding, punitive contrivance from whose output of anguish Mrs.Gilbert managed to extract a profit.

Also she was in sweet, ingratiating linen--the first fresh personal linen that had touched her in nine days.
It was all as though she were enfolded deep in the embrace of a not too fervent benediction.
About her were the large, dignified spaces of her bedroom, and beyond were the yet greater spaces of her sitting-room; and from where she lay she could see the gleaming white of her large tiled bathroom.

And there were drawers and drawers of fresh _lingerie_; and there were her closets filled with comfortable gowns that would be a thousand times more grateful after a week of Matilda's unchanged and oppressive black.