their ill-plenished lives, with Alice, Bertha, Fanny and
Isabel all growing up in tediousness around her, while she advanced
toward thirty and her mamma got more and more melancholy. But she did
not mean to submit, and let misfortune do what it would with her: she
had not yet quite believed in the misfortune; but weariness and disgust
with this wretched arrival had begun to affect her like an
uncomfortable waking, worse than the uneasy dreams which had gone
before. The self-delight with which she had kissed her image in the
glass had faded before the sense of futility in being anything
whatever--charming, clever, resolute--what was the good of it all?
Events might turn out anyhow, and men were hateful. Yes, men were
hateful. But in these last hours, a certain change had come over their
meaning. It is one thing to hate stolen goods, and another thing to
hate them the more because their being stolen hinders us from making
use of them. Gwendolen had begun to be angry with Grandcourt for being
what had hindered her from marrying him, angry with him as the cause of
her present dreary lot.

But the slow drive was nearly at an end, and the lumbering vehicle
coming up the avenue was within sight of the windows. A figure
appearing under the portico brought a rush of new and less selfish
feeling in Gwendolen, and when springing from the carriage she saw the
dear beautiful face with fresh lines of sadness in it, she threw her
arms round her mother's neck, and for the moment felt all sorrows only
in relation to her mother's feeling about them.

Behind, of course, were the sad faces of the four superfluous girls,
each, poor thing--like those other many thousand sisters of us
all--having her peculiar world which was of no importance to any one
else, but all of them feeling Gwendolen's presence to be somehow a
relenting of misfortune: where Gwendolen was, something interesting
would happen; even her hurried submission to their kisses, and "Now go
away, girls," carried the sort of comfort which all weakness finds in
decision and authoritativeness. Good Miss Merry, whose air of meek
depression, hitherto held unaccountable in a governess affectionately
attached to the family, was now at the general level of circumstances,
did not expect any greeting, but busied herself with the trunks and the
coachman's pay; while Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen hastened up-stairs and
shut themselves in the black and yellow bedroom.

"Never mind, mamma de