the force of her compassionateness.  That dog by the roadside; how the anguish of its eyes had haunted her through the day I It was the revolt of her whole being against the cruelty inherent in life.  That evening she could not read the book she had in hand; its phrases seemed to fall into triviality.  Yet—­she reasoned at a later time—­it should not have been so; the haggard gaze of fate should not daunt one; pity is but an element in the soul’s ideal of order, it should not usurp a barren sovereignty.  It is the miserable contradiction in our lot that the efficiency of the instincts of beauty-worship waits upon a force of individuality attainable only by a sacrifice of sensibility.  Emily divined this.  So it was that she came to shun the thought of struggle, to seek an abode apart from turbid conditions of life.  She was bard at work building for her soul its ‘lordly pleasure-house,’ its Palace of Art.  Could she, poor as she was, dependent, bound by such obvious chains to the gross earth, hope to abide in her courts and corridors for ever?...

Friday was the day of her arrival at Banbrigg.  On the Saturday afternoon she hoped to enjoy a walk with her father; he would reach home from the mill shortly after two o’clock, and would then have his dinner.  Mrs. Hood dined at one, and could not bring herself to alter the hour for Saturday; it was characteristic of her.  That there might be no culinary cares on Sunday morning, she always cooked her joint of meat on the last day of the week; partaking of it herself at one o’clock, she cut slices for her husband and kept them warm, with vegetables, in the oven.  This was not selfishness in theory, however much it may have been so in practice; it merely meant that she was unable to introduce variation into a mechanical order; and, as her husband never dreamed of complaining, Mrs. Hood could see in the arrangement no breach of the fitness of things, even though it meant that poor Hood never sat down to a freshly cooked meal from one end of the year to the other.  To Emily it was simply a detestable instance of the worst miseries she had to endure at home.  Coming on this first day, it disturbed her much.  She knew the uselessness, the danger, of opposing any traditional habit, but her appetite at one o’clock was small.

Mrs. Hood did not keep a servant in the house; she engaged a charwoman once a week, and did all the work at other times herself.  This was not strictly necessary; the expense of such a servant as would have answered purposes could just have been afforded; again and again Emily had entreated to be allowed to pay a girl out of her own earnings.  Mrs. Hood steadily refused.  No, she had once known what it was to have luxuries about her (that was naturally before her marriage), but those days were gone by.  She thus entailed upon herself a great deal of labour, at once repugnant to her tastes and ill-suited to the uncertainty of her health, but all this was forgotten in the solace of possessing a standing grievance, one obvious at all moments, to be uttered in a sigh, to be emphasised by the affectation of cheerfulness.  The love which was Emily’s instinct grew chill in the presence of such things.