e air; a quiet prelude to a coming change in the
weather, which was foretold also by little rents in the thick mantle of
cloud, which had shrouded the sky all day. The storm of rain was about
to be succeeded by a storm of wind. Any change would be acceptable to
me.

There was nothing within my room less dreary than without. I was in
London, but in what part of London I did not know. The house was one of
those desirable family residences, advertised in the _Times_ as to be
let furnished, and promising all the comforts and refinements of a home.
It was situated in a highly-respectable, though not altogether
fashionable quarter; as I judged by the gloomy, monotonous rows of
buildings which I could see from my windows: none of which were shops,
but all private dwellings. The people who passed up and down the streets
on line days were all of one stamp, well-to-do persons, who could afford
to wear good and handsome clothes; but who were infinitely less
interesting than the dear, picturesque beggars of Italian towns, or the
sprightly, well-dressed peasantry of French cities. The rooms on the
third floor--my rooms, which I had not been allowed to leave since we
entered the house, three weeks before--were very badly furnished,
indeed, with comfortless, high horse-hair-seated chairs, and a sofa of
the same uncomfortable material, cold and slippery, on which it was
impossible to rest. The carpet was nearly threadbare, and the curtains
of dark-red moreen were very dingy; the mirror over the chimney-piece
seemed to have been made purposely to distort my features, and produce
in me a feeling of depression. My bedroom, which communicated with this
agreeable sitting-room by folding-doors, was still smaller and gloomier;
and opened upon a dismal back-yard, where a dog in a kennel howled
dejectedly from time to time, and rattled his chain, as if to remind me
that I was a prisoner like himself. I had no books, no work, no music.
It was a dreary place to pass a dreary time in; and my only resource was
to pace to and fro--to and fro from one end to another of those wretched
rooms.

I watched the day grow dusk, and then dark. The rifts in the driving
clouds were growing larger, and the edges were torn. I left off roaming
up and down my room, like some entrapped creature, and sank down on the
floor by the window, looking out for the pale, sad blue of the sky which
gleamed now and then through the clouds, till the night had quite set
in. I d