She walked to the chimney, seated herself in a
low, soft, shiny chair almost on the hearth-rug, and gazed
listlessly into the fire. In a minute she rose and rang the bell.
"Send my maid, and shut the door," she said.
The woman came.
"Has Miss Yolland left her room yet?" she asked.
"No, ma'am."
"Let her know I am in the drawing-room."
This said, she resumed her fire-gazing.
There was not much to see in the fire, for the fire is but a
reflector, and there was not much behind the eyes that looked
into it for that fire to reflect. Hesper was no dreamer--the more
was the pity, for dreams are often the stuff out of which actions
are made. Had she been a truer woman, she might have been a
dreamer, but where was the space for dreaming in a life like
hers, without heaven, therefore without horizon, with so much
room for desiring, and so little room for hope? The buz that
greeted her entrance of a drawing-room, was the chief joy she
knew; to inhabit her well-dressed body in the presence of other
well-dressed bodies, her highest notion of existence. And even
upon these hung ever as an abating fog the consciousness of
having a husband. I can not say she was tired of marriage, for
she had loathed her marriage from the first, and had not found it
at all better than her expectation: she had been too ignorant to
forebode half its horrors.
Education she had had but little that was worth the name, for she
had never been set growing; and now, although well endowed by
nature, she was gradually becoming stupid.
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