Only that very morning she had found fault with him, and been cross to him before strangers; any man would hate that, and he hated it more than most. Why had she been so foolish? No wonder he had gone to the Harbour and to “them ’orrid girls.” It was her own fault. But when he came home, she would not speak a word of reproach. He should just sleep it off and not a word said. And she would get credit somehow to get him nice dinners. If only it weren’t that nasty old Miss Hearn to whom the rent was due! And so she sat and planned and waited, and the lamp burned low, but he did not come. Sleep won on her after her hard day’s work and she dozed off, and as she dozed she thought she was in the steep lane again where her Jerry had courted her first, and she felt the scent of pines after a hot day sweet in her nostrils, and the breath of kisses sweeter still upon her lips, and the soft tenderness of the warm moonlight slowly persuading her happy senses. And she awoke with a start. There was moonlight without, but it was wan and chill, and the only scent was a scent of salt sea spray that was borne in upon the fog: but there was a sound of voices in the night. In a moment her hand was on the latch, and she was out on the threshold above the brick steps. A man and a woman were coming up them, but the man was not her husband. It was Mr. Wilson, whom she had seen earlier in the evening—whom she had overheard—wondering “if she knew.” A sudden wave of anger against him swept over her, the foam of the mortification that she had so long endured. The blood went to her head. “What d’ye want?” said she savagely, standing at the top of her steps as though to guard her threshold. But even as she spoke the words, the wave had passed over her, leaving her cold and shivering. For Wilson was silent, and there was a look of pity on his plain face. She looked at the woman: it was the doctor’s old housekeeper. “What do ye want?” she repeated, but there was less fierceness in the voice now: it was half plaintive, half peevish. The woman came two steps further up, but still Lucy guarded her threshold. “Hush!” she whispered hoarsely, “don’t wake the childer. If there be trouble, say so. It won’t be nothin’ new for ye to tell me my man be drunk. Ye be all on yer pleased enough to come and say so. And if the truth was known I dare say ye wouldn’t mind sayin’ as ’e’d been down with the bad girls at the ’Arbour as well,” added she recklessly. “You be all on yer glad enough to say every bit o’ ill ye can on us both. Oh, yes, I know ’ow you and Miss ’Earn lays yer ’eads together agin me,” cried she, working up her anger the better to drown her fear. “I s’pose ye think it do but serve me right if ’e should treat me bad seein’ as I made myself too cheap to ’im at first. Oh, yes, don’t mind me—say it out, do.” She ended in a whimper, and the old woman looked helplessly back at the man who waited lower down. “Whativer shall we do wi’ ’er?” she whispered.