’We shan’t be driven to that.  Oh, we certainly shall not.  But it helps one to know that, strictly speaking, we are independent for another six months.’

That word gave Virginia an obvious thrill.

’Independent!  Oh, Alice, what a blessed thing is independence!  Do you know, my dear, I am afraid I have not exerted myself as I might have done to find a new place.  These comfortable lodgings, and the pleasure of seeing Monica once a week, have tempted me into idleness.  It isn’t really my wish to be idle; I know the harm it does me; but oh! if one could work in a home of one’s own!’

Alice had a startled, apprehensive look, as if her sister were touching on a subject hardly proper for discussion, or at least dangerous.

‘I’m afraid it’s no use thinking of that, dear,’ she answered awkwardly.

‘No use; no use whatever.  I am wrong to indulge in such thoughts.’

‘Whatever happens, my dear,’ said Alice presently, with all the impressiveness of tone she could command, ’we must never entrench upon our capital—­never—­never!’

‘Oh, never!  If we grow old and useless—­’

‘If no one will give us even board and lodging for our services—­’

‘If we haven’t a friend to look to,’ Alice threw in, as though they were answering each other in a doleful litany, ’then indeed we shall be glad that nothing tempted us to entrench on our capital!  It would just keep us’—­her voice sank—­’from the workhouse.’

After this each took up a volume, and until teatime they read quietly.

From six to nine in the evening they again talked and read alternately.  Their conversation was now retrospective; each revived memories of what she had endured in one or the other house of bondage.  Never had it been their lot to serve ‘really nice’ people—­this phrase of theirs was anything but meaningless.  They had lived with more or less well-to-do families in the lower middle class—­people who could not have inherited refinement, and had not acquired any, neither proletarians nor gentlefolk, consumed with a disease of vulgar pretentiousness, inflated with the miasma of democracy.  It would have been but a natural result of such a life if the sisters had commented upon it in a spirit somewhat akin to that of their employers; but they spoke without rancour, without scandalmongering.  They knew themselves superior to the women who had grudgingly paid them, and often smiled at recollections which would have moved the servile mind to venomous abuse.

At nine o’clock they took a cup of cocoa and a biscuit, and half an hour later they went to bed.  Lamp oil was costly; and indeed they felt glad to say as early as possible that another day had gone by.

Their hour of rising was eight.  Mrs. Conisbee provided hot water for their breakfast.  On descending to fetch it, Virginia found that the postman had left a letter for her.  The writing on the envelope seemed to be a stranger’s.  She ran upstairs again in excitement.