afternoon of the same day, now dreary enough, with the
dreariness naturally belonging to the dreariest month of the year, Mary
arrived in the city preferred to all cities by those who live in it,
but the most uninviting, I should imagine, to a stranger, of all cities
on the face of the earth. Cold seemed to have taken to itself a visible
form in the thin, gray fog that filled the huge station from the
platform to the glass roof. The latter had vanished, indistinguishable
from sky invisible, and from the brooding darkness, in which the lamps
innumerable served only to make spots of thinness. It was a mist, not a
November fog, properly so called; but every breath breathed by every
porter, as he ran along by the side of the slowly halting train, was
adding to its mass, which seemed to Mary to grow in bulk and density as
she gazed. Her quiet, simple, decided manner at once secured her
attention, and she was among the first who had their boxes on cabs and
were driving away.

But the drive seemed interminable, and she had grown anxious and again
calmed herself many times, before it came to an end. The house at which
the cab drew up was large, and looked as dreary as large, but scarcely
drearier than any other house in London on that same night of November.
The cabman rang the bell, but it was not until they had waited a time
altogether unreasonable that the door at length opened, and a lofty,
well-built footman in livery appeared framed in it.

Mary got out, and, going up the steps, said she hoped the driver had
brought her to the right house: it was Mrs. Redmain's she wanted.

"Mrs. Redmain is not at home, miss," answered the man. "I didn't hear
as how she was expecting of any one," he added, with a glance at the
boxes, formlessly visible on the cab, through the now thicker darkness.

"She is expecting me, I know," returned Mary; "but of course she would
not stay at home to receive me," she remarked, with a smile.

"Oh!" returned the man, in a peculiar tone, and adding, "I'll see,"
went away, leaving her on the top of the steps, with the cabman behind
her, at the bottom of them, waiting orders to get her boxes down.

"It don't appear as you was overwelcome, miss!" he remarked: with his
comrades on the stand he passed for a wit; "--leastways, it don't seem
as your sheets was quite done hairing."

"It's all right," said Mary, cheerfully.

She was not ready to imagine her dignity in danger, therefore did not
provoke ass