In the dull dead season of the year, when everything was weary and melancholy, when business was at such a standstill, that she had not even the excitement of her work to carry off her thoughts in another direction, the girl pondered over her lot, and the end of each period of reflection found her heartily sick of it. How long was it to endure? Was this daily slavery to go on for ever? Was she still to live in a garret, to emerge from thence in the early morning to the dull routine of business, to go through the daily toil of showing her employer's wares to the listless customers, of enduring all their vapid impertinences and senseless remarks, to superintend making up the boxes and the sending-off of the parcels, and to return again to the cheerless garret, weary, dispirited, and dead-beat? So that slight glimpse of the promised land which had been accorded to her when she first made up her mind that she would bring Paul's attentions to a definite end, that marriage never to be perfectly realised while he was with her, while she was in the daily habit of meeting him and listening to his impassioned words, that future which she had depicted to herself, seemed now perfectly possible of realisation, although Paul had, as she was compelled to allow to herself, never held out definite hopes of marrying her, but contented himself by dwelling on the impossibility of any decadence in his love, or of his being able to pass his life away from her. But since his absence in the country, these pleasant visions had gradually faded and grown colourless. Thinking over the past, Daisy was compelled to allow to herself that, though their acquaintance now extended over some months, the great end to which she was looking forward seemed as far off as ever. Who were those people of his, as he called them? this family of whom he apparently stood in such awe? and even if their consent were obtained, would Paul have courage enough to fly in the face of the world by marrying a girl in a station of life inferior to his own? The moral cowardice on this point she was aware of; his weakness she knew. She had seen it in his avoidance of public places when in her company, and the constant fright of detection which he laboured under. She had taxed him with it, and he could not deny it, but laughed it off as best he might. He even in laughing it off had confessed that he stood in wholesome terror of Mrs. Grundy and all the remarks which she and her compeers might make. Was this a feeling likely to be effaced by time? She thought not. The older he grew the less likely was he to care to defy the world's opinion, unsustained as he would be by the first fierce strength of that love which alone could spur him on to what was, in his eyes, a deed of such daring.