It was still early when she excused herself and went to her room. She paced up and down for a time, and then stopped suddenly in front of the looking-glass. It had become a habit with her, in the course of her lonely life, to address her own image as if it were another person.
"It is not that it is terrible," she said gravely; "I almost wish it were; it is just that it is all so deadly commonplace. Oh, Lucy, I am an abject idiot!" And like the heroines of the good old days, when advanced women were unknown, she threw herself on the great four-post bed and burst into a passion of tears.
The torrent was violent but not prolonged. In a few minutes she threw away her handkerchief and looked scornfully at her swollen face.
"After all," she said philosophically, "I suppose a good howl was the cheapest way of managing the thing in the long-run. That will be the beginning and the end of it. Hörst du wohl?—And if it so please you, Mistress Lucy, I don't regret what I have done one bit, and I would do the same thing to-morrow."
She curtseyed low to the imaginary Lucy, betook herself to bed, and in spite of grief, excitement, and anxiety, in spite of ham and egg, strong tea and hot buttered toast, she slept like a healthy animal till sunrise.
CHAPTER XI.
THE SHOP.
No; it was clear that nothing could be done with her bedroom. That was a case for pure and unmitigated endurance. Mona felt thankful, as she looked round in the morning sunshine, that she had not brought with her any of the pictures and pots and artistic draperies without which young people find it almost impossible to travel nowadays. The heavy cumbrous furniture might possibly have been subdued into insignificance; but any moderately æsthetic colour would have been drowned in the harsh dominant note shrieked out by the old-world wall-paper.
She adhered rigidly to her resolution that last night's "howl" was to be the "beginning and the end of it"; but as she leaned back on the stiff, hard pillows, her hands clasped behind her head, she looked the whole situation fairly in the face. It was not an inviting prospect by any means, but she was still young and enthusiastic, and resolution was strong within her.
"Good workmen do good work in any sphere," she thought, "and bad workmen do bad work in any sphere. It lies with myself. The game is all in my own hands. Heaven help me!"