She'll understand me then, won't she, mother ?" "I'm sometimes tempted to hope that Gabriella will never marry," replied Mrs.Carr with the uncompromising bitterness of abject despair; "the Carrs all seem to marry so badly." In her normal mood she would never have uttered this heresy, for she belonged to a generation that regarded even a bad marriage as better for a woman than no marriage at all; but the night had worn her out, and one of her spells of neuralgia, which followed fatigue, was already beginning in her face.

The purple crocheted "fascinator" she had caught up at the doctor's entrance was still on her head, and her long pale face, beneath the airy scallops, appeared frozen in an expression of incurable melancholy.

For the rest she had been too frightened, too forgetful of herself and her own comfort even to put on her stockings, though Gabriella had begged her to do so.

"Don't think about me.

Attend to poor Jane," she had repeated over and over.
"Mother, go into my room and get into bed," commanded Gabriella, whose patience, never abundant, was ebbing low.