actavish James hobbled towards the door, purring
endearments. He was better now. That anguished melody of speculation as
to Isabella Kingan's heart he had played over again with the _tempo
rubato_ and the pressed loud pedal of sentimentality, and it was now no
more than agreeably affecting as a Scotch song ... being kind to the
wean for the sake of her who was my sweethairt in auld lang syne....

She was so blind with hate of Yaverland that she was not aware of his
presence till he bent over her, whinneying in the slow, complacent
accents of Scottish sentiment, "Nelly, Nelly, what ails ye, lassie?
Nothing's happened! I'll put it all right."

"Yes, of course nothing's happened!" she snapped, her hand on the
doorknob. "Who said it had?" And then his words, "I'll put it all
right," began to torment her. They threatened her that her disgrace was
not to end here, that he might talk about it, that the thing might well
be with her to her grave, that she had done for herself, that now and
forever she had made her life not worth living. "Och, away with it!"
she almost screamed. "You've driven me so that I don't know what I'm
doing, you and your nasty wee black poodle of a son!"

He had to laugh. "Nelly, Nelly, he's as God made him!"

"Ye shelve your responsibility!" she said, and breaking immediately into
the bitterest tears of this long day of weeping, flung out of the door
of this loathed place, to which she remembered with agony as she ran
down the stairs she must return to-morrow to earn her living.

III

More than anything else she hated people to see her when she had been
crying, yet she was sorry that the little house was dark. And though she
had seen, as she came in through the square, that there were no lights
in any window, and though the sitting-room door was ajar, and showed a
cold hearth and furniture looking huddled and low-spirited as furniture
does when dusk comes and there is no company, she stood in the hall and
called, "Mother! Mother!" She more than half remembered as she called
that her mother had that morning said something about spending the
afternoon with an old friend at Trinity. But she cried out again,
"Mother! Mother!" and lest the cry should sound piteous sent it out
angrily. There was no answer but the complaining rattle of a window at
the top of the house, which, like all dwellings of the very poor, was
perpetually ailing in its fitments; and, letting her wet things fall to
her feet, she mo