tic and denoted a mind without a
feather's weight upon it.

A servant came to the young lady's door to tell her that tea was ready;
and on her asking who else was below (for she had heard the wheels of a
second vehicle just after Selina's return), she learned that Lionel had
come back. At this news she requested that some tea should be brought to
her room--she determined not to go to dinner. When the dinner-hour came
she sent down word that she had a headache, that she was going to bed.
She wondered whether Selina would come to her (she could forget
disagreeable scenes amazingly); but her fervent hope that she would stay
away was gratified. Indeed she would have another call upon her
attention if her meeting with her husband was half as much of a
concussion as was to have been expected. Laura had found herself
listening hard, after knowing that her brother-in-law was in the house:
she half expected to hear indications of violence--loud cries or the
sound of a scuffle. It was a matter of course to her that some dreadful
scene had not been slow to take place, something that discretion should
keep her out of even if she had not been too sick. She did not go to
bed--partly because she didn't know what might happen in the house. But
she was restless also for herself: things had reached a point when it
seemed to her that she must make up her mind. She left her candles
unlighted--she sat up till the small hours, in the glow of the fire.
What had been settled by her scene with Selina was that worse things
were to come (looking into her fire, as the night went on, she had a
rare prevision of the catastrophe that hung over the house), and she
considered, or tried to consider, what it would be best for her, in
anticipation, to do. The first thing was to take flight.

It may be related without delay that Laura Wing did not take flight and
that though the circumstance detracts from the interest that should be
felt in her character she did not even make up her mind. That was not so
easy when action had to ensue. At the same time she had not the excuse
of a conviction that by not acting--that is by not withdrawing from her
brother-in-law's roof--she should be able to hold Selina up to her duty,
to drag her back into the straight path. The hopes connected with that
project were now a phase that she had left behind her; she had not
to-day an illusion about her sister large enough to cover a sixpence.
She had passed through the period o