“I’ll sit up if you like, mum. I don’t think it’s no use for both to sit up again to-night.”
“No. Go and get a good long night’s rest, Mary.”
“Yes, mum, thankye, mum,” said the girl, with a yawn. “But won’t you come, too?”
“Presently. I’ll sit up till twelve.”
“Twelve, mum?” said the girl, staring. “Why, it’s ’most one now.”
“Then go to bed. I’ll come soon.”
“Don’t ketch me gettin’ married and settin’ up for no husbands,” muttered the girl. “I’d soon let my gentleman know what the key of the street meant.”
Left alone, Janet again read the letter she had received from her father, though she hardly needed this, for she pretty well knew it by heart. Then, laying it on the table again for her husband to see, she sat thinking of what might have been, and contrasted the brothers, her brow wrinkling up as she felt that day by day she was sounding some deeper depth, and finding but a fresh meanness in Jessop’s nature.
“But it was only right after all,” she told herself; and she went over again the scene in Guildford Street, the hot jealous blood rising to her cheeks, as she thought of Lyddy and her acts and words.
“I could never have forgiven that. Poor father does not believe he was guilty, or else looks upon the offence with the eyes of a man.”