struggle. In dull, stupid, obstinate despair, I threw myself on my bed, and fell from sheer fatigue into a broken, uneasy sleep.
I was awakened by a knock at the door of my room.
Was it my husband? I started to my feet as the idea occurred to me. Was some new trial of my patience and my fortitude at hand? Half nervously, half irritably, I asked who was there.
The landlady’s voice answered me.
“Can I speak to you for a moment, if you please?”
I opened the door. There is no disguising it—though I loved him so dearly, though I had left home and friends for his sake—it was a relief to me, at that miserable time, to know that Eustace had not returned to the house.
The landlady came in, and took a seat, without waiting to be invited, close by my side. She was no longer satisfied with merely asserting herself as my equal. Ascending another step on the social ladder, she took her stand on the platform of patronage, and charitably looked down on me as an object of pity.
“I have just returned from Broadstairs,” she began. “I hope you will do me the justice to believe that I sincerely regret what has happened.”
I bowed, and said nothing.
“As a gentlewoman myself,” proceeded the landlady—“reduced by family misfortunes to let lodgings, but still a gentlewoman—I feel sincere sympathy with you. I will even go further than that. I will take it on myself to say that I don’t blame you. No, no. I noticed that you were as much shocked and surprised at your mother-in-law’s conduct as I was; and that is saying a great deal—a great deal indeed. However, I have a duty to perform. It is disagreeable, but it is not the less a duty on that account. I am a single woman; not from want of opportunities of changing my condition—I beg you will understand that—but from choice. Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons into my house. There must be no mystery about the positions of my lodgers. Mystery in the position of a lodger carries with it—what shall I say? I don’t wish to offend you—I will say, a certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own common-sense. Can a person in my
Prev.
Back
Top