He thought of the look in Judith’s eyes, of the vibration in her voice when she spoke to him.
“Ah, she does not know it herself!”
Triumph, joy, compunction, an overwhelming tenderness, set his pulses beating, his whole being aglow.
It was late when, tired and haggard, he reached his home and let himself in with the key.
His mother came out on the landing with a candle.
She did not present a charming spectacle en déshabille, her large, partially bald head deprived of the sheltering, softening cap, her withered neck exposed, the lines of her figure revealed by a dingy old dressing-gown.
She gave an exclamation as she saw him; the wide, yellow expanse of her face, with its unwholesome yet undying air, lighted up by the twinkling diamonds on either side of it, looked agitated and alarmed.
“My dear boy, thank God it is you! I have been dreaming about you—a terrible dream.”
CHAPTER X.
Dusty purlieus of the law.
Tennyson.