that she had cared to encourage his
overtures, and if she were desirable as a wife in his eyes, why not in
Charlie Perigal's! Gregarious instincts ran in her blood. For all her
frequent love of solitude, there were days when her soul ached for the
companionship of her own social kind. This not being forthcoming-indeed
(despite her faith in Perigal) there being little prospect of it--she
avoided as much as possible the sight of, or physical contact with,
those prosperous ones whom she knew to be, in some cases, her equals;
in most, her social inferiors.

It was at night when she was most a prey to unquiet thoughts. Tired
with her many hours' work at the piano, she would fall into a deep
sleep, with every prospect of its continuing till Mrs Scatchard would
bring up her morning cup of tea, when Mavis would suddenly awaken, to
remain for interminable hours in wide-eyed thought. She would go over
and over again events in her past life, more particularly those that
had brought her to her present pass. The immediate future scarcely
bothered her at all, because, for the present, she was pretty sure of
employment at the academy. On the very rare occasions on which she
suffered her mind to dwell on what would happen after her child was
born, should Perigal not fulfil his repeated promises, her vivid
imagination called up such appalling possibilities that she refused to
consider them; she had enough sense to apply to her own case the wisdom
contained in the words, "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof."

In these silent watches of the night, so protracted and awesome was the
quiet, that it would seem to the girl's preternatural sensibilities as
if the life of the world had come to a dead stop, and that only she and
the little one within her were alive. Then she would wonder how many
other girls in London were in a like situation to hers; if they were
constantly kept awake obsessed by the same fears; also, if, like her,
they comforted themselves by clasping a ring which they wore suspended
on their hearts--a ring given them by the loved one, even as was hers.
Then she would fall to realising the truth of the saying, "How easily
things go wrong." It seemed such a little time since she had been a
happy girl at Melkbridge (if she had only realised how really happy she
was!), with more than enough for her everyday needs, when her heart was
untrammelled by love; when she was healthful, and, apart from the hours
which she was com