She looked dismally at the dusk stealing across the room with its threadbare carpet and faded chairs and curtains. There was no servant to come in and light the gas and close the blinds. She was all alone, and so hopeless that she did not care whether the gas was lighted or not. "What matter if it is dark, so long as I have nothing to do but think!" she said to herself, dismally. "They’ll have had their honeymoon now, and perhaps will be getting settled in their new home. I wonder where it is? To think that I shouldn’t know where my son is going to live! I never thought Bernard would turn against me; and yet--and yet I deserve it, for mine was a crooked policy, directed against all his wishes and ignoring his rights. I told myself I was doing it for him, for his best interests; but really I was doing it more for myself, that he might become rich and be in a position to give his mother a good home; and out of spite, too, against those Andersons, and a determination that Doris should not have him." She paused, listening. Some street singers were wailing forth the hymn, "O God, our help in ages past!" before the house; but the woman, who had found no help in God, because she had never sought it, was only angered by the sound. Rising and going to the window, she made emphatic signs to the man and woman--the latter with a child in her arms and another clinging to her skirts--to pass on; but they either could not see her in the deepening dusk or would not be persuaded to go away, for they continued singing even more loudly than before. "Well, I shall not give them anything!" declared Mrs. Cameron, relinquishing the attempt to stop them and returning to her chair by the fireless hearth. "What right have they to come disturbing folks in this way?" Again she sank into gloomy, miserable reflections, while the darkness increased about her. The door-bell rang; but she paid no attention to it, thinking that it was only the singers wanting alms. "They may want!" she said to herself grimly. "Other folks want what they can’t get, too!" Once more the bell rang, and yet a third time, and even a fourth; but still Mrs. Cameron remained firm in her determination not to speak to the intruders.