“There! that is all I have to say as your father.”
Janet let the letter fall in her lap, and sat in her commonly-furnished room at Norwood, hot and red of eye. No tears came to her relief, for their source seemed to have long been dried-up. Every word had combined with its fellows to form for her the old saying in the ballad: “As you have made your bed, so on it you must lie.”
Her father had been correct enough. She had fought against making any advances in her great despair; but Jessop had insisted, and actually brutally used the very words about the old man’s money, with the addition that he had been trapped into marrying a beggar, and he must make the best of it.
“I must have been mad,” she sighed, as she laid the letter on the table and looked at the clock on the chimney-piece; but it was a cheap French affair under a glass shade, and one which doubtless considered that so long as it looked attractive its duty was done. The hour hand pointed to six, and the minute hand to three.
Janet sighed, and looked at her watch, but she had not wound it up.
At that moment a sleepy-looking servant-girl entered the room.
“Want me to sit up any longer, ma’am?”
“No; you can go to bed.”
“I don’t think master means to come home to-night, ma’am, again. He took his best clothes with him o’ Chewsday.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Janet quietly. “He is very busy now.”