Sark?

When I awoke in the morning to a voiceless, solitary, idle day, how
could I help thinking of Martin Dobree, of Tardif, even of old Mother
Renouf, with her wrinkled face and her significant nods and becks?
Martin Dobree's pleasant face would come before me, with his eyes
gleaming so kindly under his square forehead, and his lips moving
tremulously with every change of feeling. Had he gone back to his cousin
Julia again, and were they married? I ought not to feel any sorrow at
that thought. His path had run side by side with mine for a little
while, but always with a great barrier between us; and now they had
diverged, and must grow farther and farther apart, never to touch again.
Yet, how my father would have loved him had he known him! How securely
he would have trusted to his care for me! But stop! There was folly and
wickedness in thinking that way. Let me make an end of that.

There was no loneliness like that loneliness. Twice a day I exchanged a
word or two with the overworked drudge of a servant in the house where I
lived; but I had no other voice to speak to me. No wonder that my
imagination sometimes ran in forbidden and dangerous channels.

When I was not thinking and dreaming thus, a host of anxieties crowded
about me. My money was melting away again, though slowly, for I denied
myself every thing but the bare necessaries of life. What was to become
of me when it was all gone? It was the old question; but the answer was
as difficult to find as ever. I was ready for any kind of work, but no
chance of work came to me. With neither work nor money, what was I to
do? What was to be the end of it?

CHAPTER THE FOURTH.

RIDLEY'S AGENCY-OFFICE.

Now and then, when I ventured out into the streets, a panic would seize
me, a dread unutterably great, that I might meet my husband amid the
crowd. I did not even know that he was in London; he had always spoken
of it as a place he detested. His habits made the free, unconventional
life upon the Continent more agreeable to him. How he was living now,
what he was doing, where he was, were so many enigmas to me; and I did
not care to run any risk in finding out the answers to them. Twice I
passed the Bank of Australia, where very probably. I could have learned
if he was in the same city as myself; but I dared not do it, and as soon
as I knew how to avoid that street, I never passed along it.

I had been allowed to leave my address with the clerk of a large