ning-hall directly under her chamber. The clinking of glasses, shrill
tittering, loud, deep laughter, single bars of a dissolute love-song,
cheers, and then the sharp rattle of a shattered wine glass reached her
in mingled sounds. She did not wish to hear it, but could not escape and
clenched her white teeth indignantly. Yet meantime the pen did not wholly
stop.

She wrote in broken, or long, disconnected sentences, almost incoherently
involved. Sometimes there were gaps, sometimes the same word was twice or
thrice repeated. The whole resembled a letter written by a lunatic, yet
every line, every stroke of the pen, expressed the same desire uttered
with passionate longing: "Take me away from here! Take me away from this
woman and this house!"

The epistle was addressed to her father. She implored him to rescue her
from this place, come or send for her. "Her uncle, Matanesse Van
Wibisma," she said, "seemed to be a sluggish messenger; he had probably
enjoyed the evenings at her aunt's, which filled her, Henrica, with
loathing. She would go out into the world after her sister, if her father
compelled her to stay here." Then she began a description of her aunt and
her life. The picture of the days and nights she had now spent for weeks
with the old lady, presented in vivid characters a mixture of great and
petty troubles, external and mental humiliations.

Only too often the same drinking and carousing had gone on below as
to-day-Henrica had always been compelled to join her aunt's guests,
elderly dissolute men of French or Italian origin and easy morals. While
describing these conventicles, the blood crimsoned her flushed cheeks
still more deeply, and the long strokes of the pen grew heavier and
heavier. What the abbe related and her aunt laughed at, what the Italian
screamed and Monseigneur smilingly condemned with a slight shake of the
head, was so shamelessly bold that she would have been defiled by
repeating the words. Was she a respectable girl or not? She would rather
hunger and thirst, than be present at such a banquet again. If the
dining-room was empty, other unprecedented demands were made upon
Henrica, for then her aunt, who could not endure to be alone a moment,
was sick and miserable, and she was obliged to nurse her. That she gladly
and readily served the suffering, she wrote, she had sufficiently proved
by her attendance on the village children when they had the smallpox, but
if her aunt could not sleep sh