She lit the candles in brass candlesticks on the table, and when the lad entered the room she was standing by them, her two hands leaning on the table near her hat, her dark eyes as sorrowful as if they had been filled with tears. He entered to this sight--a poor, untaught boy, his foolish brain only too full of expectation; he entered to see the dark room, the shining candles, and this sorrowing, beautiful image whose eyes were fixed on him. In that one instant her mastery was gained; already the unworthy triumph she had desired was won. * * * * * Jenny sat alone that night in her raftered cottage, waiting for the children who were in no hurry to return; on her mind a dread--a wife’s dread--which made her tremble lest each passing foot-fall should be her husband’s step. Alone, quite alone, with no human comfort near her, she had endured the tumult before her door that night, the shouts, the clashing of the Rantan, braying out her griefs openly, to the ears of all. And then, when that thrice-repeated clamour ceased at length, she was left to a silence still more hard to bear, left to stitch patiently with her never-wearied needle, and to wonder why the children did not come. Her mother’s heart had time to become frightened, agitated, before at eleven o’clock there was at last a sound of footsteps; and Annie, wan, chilled, and feverish, sank down in a chair on the hearth, and turned her face away--succeeded after a minute or two by the brother, who had not that day entered his home, and who seemed now as weary and feverish as herself, and still more determined than she was not to speak. Jenny asked no questions, and only said a word or two; and Annie kissed her, and went up to her room; whilst Nat, without kissing her, also stole upstairs, and undressed hastily, and lay down in his bed. He slept, village-fashion, in the corner of his mother’s room, which he had occupied almost since he was born.