’Thankful for life!  Why should I be thankful?  God has made me with a heart to feel, and He has sent me nothing but misery.  How could I help it?  How could I know what would come?  Why didn’t you tell me, mother?—­why did you let me marry?  You knew what brutes men could be; and there’s no help for me—­no hope.  I can’t kill myself; I’ve tried; but I can’t leave this world and go to another.  There may be no pity for me there, as there is none here.’

’Janet, my child, there is pity.  Have I ever done anything but love you?  And there is pity in God.  Hasn’t He put pity into your heart for many a poor sufferer?  Where did it come from, if not from Him?’

Janet’s nervous irritation now broke out into sobs instead of complainings; and her mother was thankful, for after that crisis there would very likely come relenting, and tenderness, and comparative calm.  She went out to make some tea, and when she returned with the tray in her hands, Janet had dried her eyes and now turned them towards her mother with a faint attempt to smile; but the poor face, in its sad blurred beauty, looked all the more piteous.

‘Mother will insist upon her tea,’ she said, ’and I really think I can drink a cup.  But I must go home directly, for there are people coming to dinner.  Could you go with me and help me, mother?’

Mrs. Raynor was always ready to do that.  She went to Orchard Street with Janet, and remained with her through the day—­comforted, as evening approached, to see her become more cheerful and willing to attend to her toilette.  At half-past five everything was in order; Janet was dressed; and when the mother had kissed her and said good-bye, she could not help pausing a moment in sorrowful admiration at the tall rich figure, looking all the grander for the plainness of the deep mourning dress, and the noble face with its massy folds of black hair, made matronly by a simple white cap.  Janet had that enduring beauty which belongs to pure majestic outline and depth of tint.  Sorrow and neglect leave their traces on such beauty, but it thrills us to the last, like a glorious Greek temple, which, for all the loss it has suffered from time and barbarous hands, has gained a solemn history, and fills our imagination the more because it is incomplete to the sense.

It was six o’clock before Dempster returned from Rotherby.  He had evidently drunk a great deal, and was in an angry humour; but Janet, who had gathered some little courage and forbearance from the consciousness that she had done her best to-day, was determined to speak pleasantly to him.

‘Robert,’ she said gently, as she saw him seat himself in the dining-room in his dusty snuffy clothes, and take some documents out of his pocket, ‘will you not wash and change your dress?  It will refresh you.’

‘Leave me alone, will you?’ said Dempster, in his most brutal tone.

’Do change your coat and waistcoat, they are so dusty.  I’ve laid all your things out ready.’