t she felt unusually nervous to-day, and her cheeks
were flushed. She was not accustomed to sit and think; she had passed
her life in bustle and excitement, and never once paused to reflect
calmly on any subject. Now she had no power to escape from the voice of
conscience. Let her occupy herself as she would, and go up and down the
house, something followed her close, and seemed to pull her dress, and
whisper, "Listen to me!"

She had hushed the little girl to sleep, and the boy was sitting beside
the maid, winding the yarn she had spun; and when the girl fell asleep,
Annele felt as if some one pressed her down on her chair, so that she
could not rise, and that a voice said, "Annele! what are you become
now?" The pretty, merry, much loved and praised Annele is sitting in a
dark room, in a desolate house, sighing, fretting, and complaining.

"I would gladly submit to all this if I were only liked at home; but
all I do, and all I say, is hateful to him; and I do no harm. Am I not
frugal and industrious, and ready to work still harder? But up here we
are as if in a grave." These thoughts made Annele start up, and as she
stood beside her child's cradle, she recalled a dream of the past
night. On this occasion she had not dreamt of agreeable drives, or of
visiting a pleasant inn; she thought she was standing beside her open
grave. She saw it quite distinctly, and the clods of earth from the
heap that had been dug out. "A bad omen," said she aloud, and stood
long immovable and trembling.

At last she shook off this feeling of depression, and thought, "I will
not die yet, I have not yet lived out my life, either at home or here."

She wept in pity for herself, and her thoughts wandered years back,
when she had imagined it would be so delightful to live with a husband
she loved in solitude, knowing nothing of the busy life of the world,
for she was sick of the constant tumult of an inn, where she could not
help suspecting, though she did not know it for a fact, that the whole
extravagant mode of going on rested on a very tottering foundation. It
was the fault of her husband, that she longed for a more profitable
business to employ her dormant talents.

"He is like his musical clocks; they play their own melodies, but are
incapable of listening to those of others."

In the midst of her depression, she could not resist smiling at this
comparison. Her thoughts strayed farther; she would gladly have been
submissive to a hus