Where people wish to attract, they should always be ignorant ... a woman, especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can.
Northanger Abbey.
It was snowing—or rather, sleeting, in the half-hearted, fitful way to which Londoners are accustomed. Out of doors, the lamps flared on wet glistening pavements, with here and there a mass of rapidly thawing, congealed ice, which made walking unpleasant. It was pitch-dark, though not yet five o'clock, and the atmosphere was full of a raw cold, more penetrating than frost.
In the suburb of Woodstead, the streets were swimming in slush, through which rolled the omnibuses, packed full inside, and thatched with soaking umbrellas under which cowered unlucky passengers who felt that they were taking cold every moment. Crowsley Road, the main thoroughfare, contained fine, solid houses, standing well back from the street—detached, for the most part, and having their own gardens. Mansfield Road was a turning out of Crowsley Road, and here the houses were small, semidetached, and unpretentious, though these, too, as is the fashion in Woodstead, had a strip of garden in front.
In number seven, the blinds had not been drawn, nor the lamps lit, though it was so dark, and the outside prospect so uninviting. The fire was the only light in the little dining-room, and on the hearth-rug before it sat a girl, her arms round her knees, her eyes fixed on the glowing coals.
The uncertain light of the flickering flames showed that the little room was furnished with several bits of handsome old oak, with a goodly supply of books, and with several oil-paintings, the quality of which could hardly be judged in the dark.
On the floor by the fire lay a number of loose sheets of manuscript, a pen, and inkstand, so arranged that anyone suddenly entering the room must of necessity knock them down. Wynifred Allonby, however—for she it was who sat alone—took no heed of her surroundings. She was miles away, in a dream-world of her own.
The expression of her face had changed since last summer. The independent, courageous, free look was gone. In its stead was a wistfulness, a certain restlessness, which, though it saddened, yet certainly infused a fresh interest. Apparently a struggle was going on in her mind, for her brows were drawn together, and at last, as she stared into the embers, she broke into a little laugh and spoke aloud.
"My dear girl, if I could only persuade you what an idiot you are," said she. "Will nothing—absolutely nothing make you ashamed of yourself? Faugh! I am sick of you—you that were always so high and mighty, you that hated and abhorred love-sick maidens, nicely you are, served out, now ... a man that chance just flung into your society for a few weeks, a man above you in social standing—whose family would think it as great a comedown for him to marry you, as you would think it to marry the butcher!... I have no patience with you, really. Haven't you read your Clough? Don't you remember the Amours de Voyage? Yes, that was a Claud, too; and I think he must have been something like mine—like this one, I mean. 'Juxtaposition,' my good young woman, 'is much.' And what was it but juxtaposition? Oh, didn't I know it all the time—know that it couldn't last, that he was just masquerading for the time in a country romance, that he must needs go back to his world of Piccadilly and peeresses.... And yet, I had not the sense to——Oh, it is so hard, so very hard! That I should want him so, and have to confess it to myself, the hateful truth that I do want him and can't forget—while he has no need of me at all!..."
Her face, no longer pale for the moment, dropped upon her hands, and she gave a little sound, between a laugh and a sob.