visible in the oldest and staidest of the servants, for in
spite of Wyvis' many shortcomings and his equivocal position, he was
universally liked by his inferiors, if not by those who esteemed
themselves his superiors, in social station. Mrs. Brand had gone to bed
early, and Janetta hoped that she was asleep; Mrs. Wyvis had kept
Janetta at her bedside until after eleven o'clock, regaling her with an
account of her early experience in Paris. When at last she seemed
sleepy, Janetta said good-night and went to her own room. She was tired
but wakeful. The prospect of Wyvis' return excited her; she felt that it
would be impossible to sleep that night, and she resolved therefore to
establish herself before the fire in her own room, with a book, and to
see, by carefully abstracting her mind from actual fact, whether she
could induce the shy goddess, sleep, to visit her.

She read for some time, but she had great difficulty in fixing her mind
upon her book. She found herself conning the same words over and over
again, without understanding their meaning in the least; her thoughts
flew continually to Wyvis and his affairs, and to the mother and wife
and son with whom her fate had linked her with such curious closeness.
At last she relinquished the attempt to read, and sat for some time
gazing into the fire. She heard the clock strike one; the quarter and
half-hour followed at intervals, but still she sat on. Anyone who had
seen her at that hour would hardly have recognized her for the
vivacious, sparkling, ever cheerful woman who made the brightness of the
Red House; the sunshine had left her face, her eyes were wistful, almost
sad; the lines of her mouth drooped, and her cheeks had grown very pale.
She felt very keenly that the period of happy, peaceful work and rest
which she had enjoyed for the last few months was coming to an end. She
was trying to picture to herself what her future life would be, and it
was difficult to imagine it when her old ties had all been severed. "It
seems as if I had to give up everybody that I ever cared for," she said
to herself, not complainingly, but as one recognizing the fact that some
persons are always more or less lonely in the world, and that she
belonged to a lonely class. "My father has gone--my brother and sisters
do not need me; Margaret abandoned me; Wyvis and his mother and Julian
are lost to me from henceforth. God forgive me," said Janetta to
herself, burying her face in her hands