with a great deal of rumbling, bouncing and scratching, by a couple of remarkably small horses.  When it reached a certain point the people in front of the grave-yard, of whom much the greater number were women, carrying satchels and parcels, projected themselves upon it in a compact body—­a movement suggesting the scramble for places in a life-boat at sea—­and were engulfed in its large interior.  Then the life-boat—­or the life-car, as the lady at the window of the hotel vaguely designated it—­went bumping and jingling away upon its invisible wheels, with the helmsman (the man at the wheel) guiding its course incongruously from the prow.  This phenomenon was repeated every three minutes, and the supply of eagerly-moving women in cloaks, bearing reticules and bundles, renewed itself in the most liberal manner.  On the other side of the grave-yard was a row of small red brick houses, showing a series of homely, domestic-looking backs; at the end opposite the hotel a tall wooden church-spire, painted white, rose high into the vagueness of the snow-flakes.  The lady at the window looked at it for some time; for reasons of her own she thought it the ugliest thing she had ever seen.  She hated it, she despised it; it threw her into a state of irritation that was quite out of proportion to any sensible motive.  She had never known herself to care so much about church-spires.

She was not pretty; but even when it expressed perplexed irritation her face was most interesting and agreeable.  Neither was she in her first youth; yet, though slender, with a great deal of extremely well-fashioned roundness of contour—­a suggestion both of maturity and flexibility—­she carried her three and thirty years as a light-wristed Hebe might have carried a brimming wine-cup.  Her complexion was fatigued, as the French say; her mouth was large, her lips too full, her teeth uneven, her chin rather commonly modeled; she had a thick nose, and when she smiled—­she was constantly smiling—­the lines beside it rose too high, toward her eyes.  But these eyes were charming:  gray in color, brilliant, quickly glancing, gently resting, full of intelligence.  Her forehead was very low—­it was her only handsome feature; and she had a great abundance of crisp dark hair, finely frizzled, which was always braided in a manner that suggested some Southern or Eastern, some remotely foreign, woman.  She had a large collection of ear-rings, and wore them in alternation; and they seemed to give a point to her Oriental or exotic aspect.  A compliment had once been paid her, which, being repeated to her, gave her greater pleasure than anything she had ever heard.  “A pretty woman?” some one had said.  “Why, her features are very bad.”  “I don’t know about her features,” a very discerning observer had answered; “but she carries her head like a pretty woman.”  You may imagine whether, after this, she carried her head less becomingly.

She turned away from the window at last, pressing her hands to her eyes.  “It ’s too horrible!” she exclaimed.  “I shall go back—­I shall go back!” And she flung herself into a chair before the fire.