But she did not keep her promise—she did fret. She sat and rocked herself to and fro, and thought of all she might have done which she had not done, and of all she had done that would have best been left undone.
Yes, she had worried him; she had been too sharp, too fretful. She had not been able to make life gay for him—there were always so many cares; and he hated cares and loved gaiety.
Only that very morning she had found fault with him, and been cross to him before strangers; any man would hate that, and he hated it more than most. Why had she been so foolish? No wonder he had gone to the Harbour and to “them ’orrid girls.” It was her own fault. But when he came home, she would not speak a word of reproach. He should just sleep it off and not a word said. And she would get credit somehow to get him nice dinners. If only it weren’t that nasty old Miss Hearn to whom the rent was due!
And so she sat and planned and waited, and the lamp burned low, but he did not come.
Sleep won on her after her hard day’s work and she dozed off, and as she dozed she thought she was in the steep lane again where her Jerry had courted her first, and she felt the scent of pines after a hot day sweet in her nostrils, and the breath of kisses sweeter still upon her lips, and the soft tenderness of the warm moonlight slowly persuading her happy senses.
And she awoke with a start.
There was moonlight without, but it was wan and chill, and the only scent was a scent of salt sea spray that was borne in upon the fog: but there was a sound of voices in the night.
In a moment her hand was on the latch, and she was out on the threshold above the brick steps.
A man and a woman were coming up them, but the man was not her husband. It was Mr. Wilson, whom she had seen earlier in the evening—whom she had overheard—wondering “if she knew.” A sudden wave of anger against him swept over her, the foam of the mortification that she had so long endured.
The blood went to her head.