could not proceed in it
without appearing to encourage scandal. The hope of eliciting some
suggestive information had failed; but whether Mildred had really
disclosed all she knew seemed doubtful.

At the end of the week Miss Barfoot left home for her own holiday; she
was going to Scotland, and would be away for nearly the whole of
September. At this time of the year the work in Great Portland Street
was very light; not much employment offered for the typewriters, and
the pupils numbered only about half a dozen. Nevertheless, it pleased
Rhoda to have the establishment under her sole direction; she desired
authority, and by magnifying the importance of that which now fell into
her hands, she endeavoured to sustain herself under the secret misery
which, for all her efforts, weighed no less upon her as time went on.
It was a dreary make-believe. On the first night of solitude at Chelsea
she shed bitter tears; and not only wept, but agonized in mute frenzy,
the passions of her flesh torturing her until she thought of death as a
refuge. Now she whispered the name of her lover with every word and
phrase of endearment that her heart could suggest; the next moment she
cursed him with the fury of deadliest hatred. In the half-delirium of
sleeplessness, she revolved wild, impossible schemes for revenging
herself, or, as the mood changed, all but resolved to sacrifice
everything to her love, to accuse herself of ignoble jealousy and
entreat forgiveness. Of many woeful nights this was the worst she had
yet suffered.

It recalled to her with much vividness a memory of girlhood, or indeed
of childhood. She thought of that figure in the dim past, that rugged,
harsh-featured man, who had given her the first suggestion of
independence; thrice her own age, yet the inspirer of such tumultuous
emotion in her ignorant heart; her friend at Clevedon--Mr. Smithson. A
question from Mary Barfoot had caused her to glance back at him across
the years, but only for an instant, and with self-mockery. What she now
endured was the ripe intensity of a woe that fell upon her, at fifteen,
when Mr. Smithson passed from her sight and away for ever. Childish
folly! but the misery of it, the tossing at night, the blank outlook!
How contemptible to revive such sensations, with mature intellect,
after so long and stern a discipline!

Dreading the Sunday, so terrible in its depressing effect upon the
lonely and unhappy, she breakfasted as soon as possible,