"The kind of atmosphere that slackens fiddle-strings and women's nerves," thought Faunce. "I shall find her in the doldrums."
"Well, Betsy, how's your first floor to-day?" he asked, when the little servant opened the door.
"Oh, she's in one of her nasty tempers—just because the sittin'-room chimley smoked all the mornin'—and she's that low! But you'll cheer 'er hup, I dessay."
"I don't know about that, Betsy," said Mr. Faunce, who did not feel himself the harbinger of joy.
"Come in, can't you?" Mrs. Randall said peevishly, when he knocked at the door.
She was crouching over the fire, in a room that was grey with smoke, and she was wearing a terrible garment of soiled and crumpled plush, with a ragged bead trimming—a garment she called her tea-gown, but which on her "low" days was breakfast, tea, and dinner gown, and sometimes served also as bed-gown, when the morphia needle had been freely used, and she flung herself upon her bed in a casual way, to dream through the long night.
"Oh, it's you!" she said. "Come and sit down, if you can breathe in this stifling hole. That beast of a chimney left off smoking an hour ago, but I can't get the smoke out of the room, though I had the winder open till I got the shivers. Well, what's your news?" she asked carelessly, by way of starting the conversation.
"Bad," he answered, in a grave voice. "Very bad. I have just come from Southampton."
It was nearly four o'clock, and the London light was waning, but it was light enough for him to see the livid change in her customary pallor.
"Well, old chap, and what may you have been doing there?" she asked, with an attempt at sprightliness. "Been to see your sweetheart, or to offer yourself for M.P. at the next vacancy?"