," she muttered to her pillow; and she shrivelled
at the vision of vague metropolises, shining super-Nettletons,
where girls in better clothes than Belle Balch's talked fluently of
architecture to young men with hands like Lucius Harney's. Then she
remembered his sudden pause when he had come close to the desk and had
his first look at her. The sight had made him forget what he was going
to say; she recalled the change in his face, and jumping up she ran over
the bare boards to her washstand, found the matches, lit a candle, and
lifted it to the square of looking-glass on the white-washed wall. Her
small face, usually so darkly pale, glowed like a rose in the faint orb
of light, and under her rumpled hair her eyes seemed deeper and larger
than by day. Perhaps after all it was a mistake to wish they were blue.
A clumsy band and button fastened her unbleached night-gown about the
throat. She undid it, freed her thin shoulders, and saw herself a bride
in low-necked satin, walking down an aisle with Lucius Harney. He would
kiss her as they left the church.... She put down the candle and covered
her face with her hands as if to imprison the kiss. At that moment she
heard Mr. Royall's step as he came up the stairs to bed, and a fierce
revulsion of feeling swept over her. Until then she had merely despised
him; now deep hatred of him filled her heart. He became to her a
horrible old man....

The next day, when Mr. Royall came back to dinner, they faced each other
in silence as usual. Verena's presence at the table was an excuse for
their not talking, though her deafness would have permitted the freest
interchange of confidences. But when the meal was over, and Mr. Royall
rose from the table, he looked back at Charity, who had stayed to help
the old woman clear away the dishes.

"I want to speak to you a minute," he said; and she followed him across
the passage, wondering.

He seated himself in his black horse-hair armchair, and she leaned
against the window, indifferently. She was impatient to be gone to the
library, to hunt for the book on North Dormer.

"See here," he said, "why ain't you at the library the days you're
supposed to be there?"

The question, breaking in on her mood of blissful abstraction, deprived
her of speech, and she stared at him for a moment without answering.

"Who says I ain't?"

"There's been some complaints made, it appears. Miss Hatchard sent for
me this morning----"

Charity's smoulderi