ay with
my landlord, I shall have barely five pounds left! There is not the
shadow of a prospect between now and Tuesday of my earning any money;
and I don't possess a friend in this place who would trust me with
sixpence. The difficulties that are swarming round me wanted but one
more to complete them, and that one has come.

"Midwinter would assist me, of course, if I could bring myself to ask
him for assistance. But _that_ means marrying him. Am I really desperate
enough and helpless enough to end it in that way? No; not yet.

"My head feels heavy; I must get out into the fresh air, and think about
it."

"Two o'clock.--I believe I have caught the infection of Midwinter's
superstition. I begin to think that events are forcing me nearer
and nearer to some end which I don't see yet, but which I am firmly
persuaded is now not far off.

"I have been insulted--deliberately insulted before witnesses--by Miss
Milroy.

"After walking, as usual, in the most unfrequented place I could pick
out, and after trying, not very successfully, to think to some good
purpose of what I am to do next, I remembered that I needed some
note-paper and pens, and went back to the town to the stationer's shop.
It might have been wiser to have sent for what I wanted. But I was weary
of myself, and weary of my lonely rooms; and I did my own errand, for no
better reason than that it was something to do.

"I had just got into the shop, and was asking for what I wanted, when
another customer came in. We both looked up, and recognized each other
at the same moment: Miss Milroy.

"A woman and a lad were behind the counter, besides the man who was
serving me. The woman civilly addressed the new customer. 'What can we
have the pleasure of doing for you, miss?' After pointing it first by
looking me straight in the face, she answered, 'Nothing, thank you, at
present. I'll come back when the shop is empty.'

"She went out. The three people in the shop looked at me in silence.
In silence, on my side, I paid for my purchases, and left the place. I
don't know how I might have felt if I had been in my usual spirits.
In the anxious, unsettled state I am in now, I can't deny it, the girl
stung me.

"In the weakness of the moment (for it was nothing else), I was on the
point of matching her petty spitefulness by spitefulness quite as petty
on my side. I had actually got as far as the whole length of the street
on my way to the major's cottage, bent on