You have seen Matilda, before. Turn back to a picture, in Chapter V., and look at her upon her wedding-day. It is needless for me to go with you along the beaten path of her career, down, down, down, from ball-room to bar-room; from house of----"a place to meet a friend"--to a house of----"ladies' boarding-house"--to a house of common resort--the abode of wretchedness, woe, sin, degradation, disease, and "painted sepulchres"--from that to a low room, with "my man," and, finally, to fill the picture in the Twopenny Marriage. Let the curtain fall--the dead rest in peace. Watch the living. CHAPTER X. ATHALIA, THE SEWING GIRL. "It is their husbands' fault, if wives do fall." "The weakest goes to the wall." Walter came down on the train with the Grundys. They urged him to "abandon his folly, and go home with them." They little thought they had no home to go to themselves. He said, no; she was his wife, and he never would leave her. He thought so then. If he had left the bottle, he never would. "Where shall we go, Athalia?" "Come with me; I have a home." So he went to her little room in Broome street. The door was fast, and the room dark. She rapped, and was soon answered by Jeannette's voice: "Who is there?" "It is me." What a world of meaning is in those three little words. How the memory of many a wife will wander back into other days, when she heard a midnight rap, and putting her head out of the chamber window, where she had been "making a frock and rocking the cradle" all the early part of the night; and how her heart palpitates at the answer to her half spoken, half whispered question, "Who is there?" "It is me," comes up to her ready ear in the open window. Down goes the sash, for the wind might blow on "the baby;" they "have got a baby." In a minute, oh half that time, "me" sees the light through the key-hole, and hears a little step running down stairs. It stops an instant to set the lamp on the table. What for? She could hold it in one hand, while she unlocked the door with the other. Yes, but when the door is open she will have work for both hands--both arms will be around the neck of somebody. "Heigho, for somebody!" I wish every loving heart had somebody; somebody to say, "It is me." "Wait a minute." A little light flashed through the key-hole, then the bolt went back with a click, then the door opened, a night-cap and white gown, a pair of blue eyes, and some pale red curls, were seen a moment, and then a very light scream, and Athalia and Walter were in the dark again. The door was closed in their faces. Was she, too, shut out from her home? "Open the door, Jeannette. Never mind your night-gown." "Oh. I cannot; indeed I cannot. That is not all. Charles is here." Charles there, at that time of night, and she in her night-gown! What can it mean? "Jeannette, what does it mean?"