night, she should have been a skeleton, with dart and hour-glass,
rather than a woman, this attendant; for her touch was as the touch
of Death. The painted object shrivelled underneath her hand; the form
collapsed, the hair dropped off, the arched dark eyebrows changed to
scanty tufts of grey; the pale lips shrunk, the skin became cadaverous
and loose; an old, worn, yellow, nodding woman, with red eyes, alone
remained in Cleopatra's place, huddled up, like a slovenly bundle, in a
greasy flannel gown.

The very voice was changed, as it addressed Edith, when they were alone
again.

'Why don't you tell me,' it said sharply, 'that he is coming here
to-morrow by appointment?'

'Because you know it,' returned Edith, 'Mother.'

The mocking emphasis she laid on that one word!

'You know he has bought me,' she resumed. 'Or that he will, to-morrow.
He has considered of his bargain; he has shown it to his friend; he is
even rather proud of it; he thinks that it will suit him, and may be had
sufficiently cheap; and he will buy to-morrow. God, that I have lived
for this, and that I feel it!'

Compress into one handsome face the conscious self-abasement, and the
burning indignation of a hundred women, strong in passion and in pride;
and there it hid itself with two white shuddering arms.

'What do you mean?' returned the angry mother. 'Haven't you from a
child--'

'A child!' said Edith, looking at her, 'when was I a child? What
childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman--artful, designing,
mercenary, laying snares for men--before I knew myself, or you, or even
understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learnt You
gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride tonight.'

And as she spoke, she struck her hand upon her beautiful bosom, as
though she would have beaten down herself.

'Look at me,' she said, 'who have never known what it is to have an
honest heart, and love. Look at me, taught to scheme and plot when
children play; and married in my youth--an old age of design--to one
for whom I had no feeling but indifference. Look at me, whom he left a
widow, dying before his inheritance descended to him--a judgment on you!
well deserved!--and tell me what has been my life for ten years since.'

'We have been making every effort to endeavour to secure to you a good
establishment,' rejoined her mother. 'That has been your life. And now
you have got it.'

'There is no slave in a market: th