The ladies who had made Moira’s acquaintance and become her friends one after another went their way, and she was left alone.
True, others came. Every day they came and went. Some stayed a few hours; some stayed a few days. Among these were women who would have been very kind to the lonely young stranger if they had had the chance. But they had not. They never saw her, or saw to notice her.
With her increasing infirmities, the young wife, when daily expecting to become a mother, grew very shy and timid. She seldom went down into the ladies’ parlor—that neutral ground upon which acquaintances are sometimes made, and even friendships occasionally formed; and when she did go for a little change, she would conceal herself between the curtain and sash of some front window, and so, hidden from the company, look out upon the brilliant life of Sacramento Street until the utter weariness that now so frequently overcame her strength compelled her to creep away to the repose of her own private apartment.
Toward the last of her life she gave up entirely going to the ladies’ parlor, and confined her walk to the stairs and halls between her bedchamber and the public dining-room.
This walk was her only exercise, her only change of scene, and she continued it daily to the last day of her life.
She made no new acquaintances in place of those who had gone away. She had no friend except an humble one in the chambermaid who attended to her room. In many respects she was worse off in this elegant and luxurious house than she would have been in the rudest log cabin of a mining camp, for here, though she had everything else, she lacked what she would have got there—human companionship and sympathy.
Often she longed—wildly longed—to see or hear from her husband, but knew that it was impossible for her to do so.
Yet she had one great stay and comfort—her Christian faith. She was devoutly religious and spent much time in her room in reading the Bible, or some book of devotion, or in prayer, or in singing in a low tone some favorite hymn.
So the time passed until about six weeks after The O’Melaghlin had gone away to seek his fortune, when there came a change. She fell too ill to go down to dinner that evening.
The friendly chambermaid, who volunteered to bring her a cup of tea, also offered to spend the night with her.