The first sight of this woman, on her entrance, sickened and shocked me.  All that was naturally repulsive in her, was made doubly revolting by the characteristics of the habitual drunkard, lowering and glaring at me in her purple, bloated face.  To see her heavy hands shaking at the pillow, as they tried mechanically to arrange it; to see her stand, alternately leering and scowling by the bedside, an incarnate blasphemy in the sacred chamber of death, was to behold the most horrible of all mockeries, the most impious of all profanations.  No loneliness in the presence of mortal agony could try me to the quick, as the sight of that foul old age of degradation and debauchery, defiling the sick room, now tried me.  I determined to wait alone by the bedside till Mr. Bernard returned.

With some difficulty, I made the wretched drunkard understand that she might go downstairs again; and that I would call her if she was wanted.  At last, she comprehended my meaning, and slowly quitted the room.  The door closed on her; and I was left alone to watch the last moments of the woman who had ruined me!

As I sat down near the open window, the sounds outside in the street told of the waning of the night.  There was an echo of many footsteps, a hoarse murmur of conflicting voices, now near, now afar off.  The public houses were dispersing their drunken crowds—­the crowds of a Saturday night:  it was twelve o’clock.

Through those street-sounds of fierce ribaldry and ghastly mirth, the voice of the dying woman penetrated, speaking more slowly, more distinctly, more terribly than it had spoken yet.

“I see him,” she said, staring vacantly at me, and moving her hands slowly to and fro in the air.  “I see him!  But he’s a long way off; he can’t hear our secrets, and he does not suspect you as mother does.  Don’t tell me that about him any more; my flesh creeps at it!  What are you looking at me in that way for?  You make me feel on fire.  You know I like you, because I must like you; because I can’t help it.  It’s no use saying hush:  I tell you he can’t hear us, and can’t see us.  He can see nothing; you make a fool of him, and I make a fool of him.  But mind!  I will ride in my own carriage:  you must keep things secret enough to let me do that.  I say I will ride in my carriage:  and I’ll go where father walks to business:  I don’t care if I splash him with my carriage wheels!  I’ll be even with him for some of the passions he’s been in with me.  You see how I’ll go into our shop and order dresses! (be quiet!  I say he can’t hear us).  I’ll have velvet where his sister has silk, and silk where she has muslin:  I’m a finer girl than she is, and I’ll be better dressed.  Tell him anything, indeed!  What have I ever let out?  It’s not so easy always to make believe I’m in love with him, after what you have told me.  Suppose he found us out?—­Rash?  I’m no more rash than you are!  Why didn’t you come back from France in time, and stop it all?  Why did you let me marry him?  A nice wife I’ve been to him, and a nice husband he has been to me—­a husband who waits a year!  Ha! ha! he calls himself a man, doesn’t he?  A husband who waits a year!”