ow thirty-five--close on
thirty-six; and twelve years of hard work, joyless struggle, and
pursuing remorse had left upon her indelible marks. She had grown
excessively thin, and lines of restlessness, of furtive pain and
suspicion, had graven themselves, delicately, irrevocably, about
her eyes and mouth, on her broad brow and childish neck. There were
hollows in the cheeks, the cutting of the face seemed to be ruder and
the skin browner than of old. Nevertheless, the leanness of the face
was that of energy, not that of emaciation. It pointed to life in
the open air, a strenuous physical life; and, but for the look
of fretting, of ceaseless and troubled longing with which it was
associated, it would rather have given beauty than taken it away.

Her eyes were more astonishing than ever; but there was a touch of
wildness in them, and they were grown, in truth, too big and staring
for the dwindled face. A pathetic face!--as of one in whom the impulse
to weep is always present, yet for ever stifled. It had none of that
noble intimacy with sorrow which so often dignifies a woman's whole
aspect; it spoke rather of the painful, struggling, desiring will,
the will of passion and regret, the will which fights equally with the
past and with the future, and is, for Buddhist and Christian alike,
the torment of existence.

Again a sound of wheels drew her eyes to the road. But it was only the
Hawkshead butcher going his rounds. He stopped below the cottage,
and Miss Anna's servant went out to him. Phoebe sighed afresh in
disappointment, her ears still strained the while to catch the first
sound of that primitive horn, wherewith the postman in his cart, as
he mounts the Langdale Valley, summons the dwellers in the scattered
farms and cottages to come and take their letters.

But very likely there would be no letter at all. This was Thursday.
On Saturday Miss Anna had met her and Carrie at Windermere, and had
brought them to the old place. Sunday and Monday had been filled
with agitated consultations. Then, on Tuesday, a neighbour living in
Elterwater, and an old friend of Miss Anna's, had gone up to London,
bearing with her a parcel addressed to 'John Fenwick, Constable
House, East Road, Chelsea,' which she had promised to deliver, either
personally or through one of the servants of the boarding-house
whither she was bound.

This lady must have delivered it on Wednesday--some time on
Wednesday--she would not pledge herself. But p