now-covered Raveloe lanes, carrying her child in her arms.

This journey on New Year's Eve was a premeditated act of vengeance
which she had kept in her heart ever since Godfrey, in a fit of
passion, had told her he would sooner die than acknowledge her as his
wife. There would be a great party at the Red House on New Year's Eve,
she knew: her husband would be smiling and smiled upon, hiding _her_
existence in the darkest corner of his heart. But she would mar his
pleasure: she would go in her dingy rags, with her faded face, once as
handsome as the best, with her little child that had its father's hair
and eyes, and disclose herself to the Squire as his eldest son's wife.
It is seldom that the miserable can help regarding their misery as a
wrong inflicted by those who are less miserable. Molly knew that the
cause of her dingy rags was not her husband's neglect, but the demon
Opium to whom she was enslaved, body and soul, except in the lingering
mother's tenderness that refused to give him her hungry child. She
knew this well; and yet, in the moments of wretched unbenumbed
consciousness, the sense of her want and degradation transformed itself
continually into bitterness towards Godfrey. _He_ was well off; and if
she had her rights she would be well off too. The belief that he
repented his marriage, and suffered from it, only aggravated her
vindictiveness. Just and self-reproving thoughts do not come to us too
thickly, even in the purest air, and with the best lessons of heaven
and earth; how should those white-winged delicate messengers make their
way to Molly's poisoned chamber, inhabited by no higher memories than
those of a barmaid's paradise of pink ribbons and gentlemen's jokes?

She had set out at an early hour, but had lingered on the road,
inclined by her indolence to believe that if she waited under a warm
shed the snow would cease to fall. She had waited longer than she
knew, and now that she found herself belated in the snow-hidden
ruggedness of the long lanes, even the animation of a vindictive
purpose could not keep her spirit from failing. It was seven o'clock,
and by this time she was not very far from Raveloe, but she was not
familiar enough with those monotonous lanes to know how near she was to
her journey's end. She needed comfort, and she knew but one
comforter--the familiar demon in her bosom; but she hesitated a moment,
after drawing out the black remnant, before she raised it to her lips