“Well” she said, slowly after reflection, “it all rather frightens me.”
As if the chill in the air of the cheerless room had suddenly accentuated itself, she arose, took a match-box from the mantel, and, stooping, lit the fire.
He looked down at the tall, black-clad figure, bent in stiff awkwardness over the smoking grate, and his eyes softened. Then he took fresh note of the room—the faded, threadbare carpet, the sparse old furniture that had seemed ugly to even his uninformed boyish taste, the dingy walls and begrimed low ceiling—all pathetic symbols of the bleak life to which she had been condemned.
“Frightens you?” he queried, with a kind of jovial tenderness, as she got to her feet; “frightens you, eh? Why, within a month's time, old lady, you'll be riding in the Park in your own carriage, with niggers folding their arms up behind, and you'll be taking it all as easy and as natural as if you'd been born in a barouche.”
He added, in response to the enquiry of her lifted brows: “Barouche? That's what we'd call in England a landau.”
She stood with a foot upon the fender, her tired, passive face inclined meditatively, her rusty old black gown drawn back by one hand from the snapping sparks. “No,” she said, slowly, joyless resignation mingling with pride in her voice. “I was born here over the shop.”
“Well, good God! so was I,” he commented, lustily. “But that's no reason why I shouldn't wind up in Park Lane—or you either.”
She had nothing to say to this, apparently. After a little, she seated herself again, drawing her chair closer to the hearth. “It's years since I've lit this fire before the first of November,” she remarked, with the air of defending the action to herself.
“Oh, we're celebrating,” he said, rubbing his hands over the reluctant blaze. “Everything goes, tonight!”
Her face, as she looked up at him, betrayed the bewilderment of her mind. “You set out to tell me what it was all about,” she reminded him. “You see I'm completely in the dark. I only hear you say that you've made a great fortune. That's all I know. Or perhaps you've told me as much as you care to.”