than ever, for Nancy was still the great person of the family. She was rich in comparison with them. She had a house of her own--she was a lady. Numberless benefits might flow to them from her hands. This was not necessary to make these good people kind to their own flesh and blood; but still such considerations warm and quicken human feeling. They were not fond of Nancy for what she had to bestow, but the fact that she had something to bestow did not diminish their fondness. They hushed the house and kept it still, making Charley’s life miserable, and the father’s a burden to him, for Nancy’s sake. It was her nerves, poor thing, they said, and everything had to give way to Nancy’s nerves--things hitherto unknown in the house. When, however, Nancy came downstairs at last, after her bout of illness, she experienced not only the horrible sense of re-beginning which wrings the soul after any great calamity, but a sudden and fantastic increase of misery in the disgust which seized upon her for all her surroundings. Not only had she a new life to begin without Arthur, without hope, without any future widening of her horizon possible; but the home which she had sought so anxiously, and to which she had clung in opposition to Arthur and defiance of him, suddenly changed its aspect to her. She felt it the first afternoon when she came downstairs supported, though it was unnecessary, by her anxious mother, and was placed in the old easy-chair by the fire, which was burning brightly, though it was not necessary either, on this soft spring afternoon. She had scarcely sat down in the chair, which was her father’s chair, close to the fire and to the little mahogany bracket on which he placed his rum-and-water, when this sudden loathing seized her. The afternoon sun was shining into the room, betraying dust where dust was not expected, showing the imperfections of everything--the old haircloth sofa in the corner, the not very clean carpet, the table covered with painted oil-cloth. Meanness, smallness, poverty seemed to have come into every detail. The air was too warm, and it was not fresh, but retained odours of the dinner, of the beer and cheese with which it had been concluded; for Mrs. Bates had not liked to open the window to chill the air for the invalid. What spell had fallen upon this room, which she had so longed for, and which she had returned to with such content? How mean it looked, what a contracted, paltry place, unlovely, unsweet! And it was to this that she had dragged Arthur! this was the thought that flew like an arrow through Nancy’s mind. They brought a little tray with tea, and hot muffins to tempt her invalid appetite, and Mrs. Bates was at once alarmed and vexed when she pushed it peevishly away and declined to eat.