The moment Lizzie quitted the room, Mrs. Lenoir turned the key in the door, so that no other person should enter. The interview had affected her powerfully, and the endeavour she made to resume her work was futile; her fingers refused to fulfil their office. Rising from her seat, she paced the room with uneven steps, with her hands tightly clasped before her. To and fro, to and fro she walked, casting her eyes fearsomely towards the window every time she turned to face it. The curtains were thick, and the night was hidden from her, but she seemed to see it through the dark folds; it possessed a terrible fascination for her, against which she vainly struggled. It had been snowing, Lizzie had said. She had not known it; was it snowing still? She would not, she dared not look; she clasped her fingers so tightly that the blood deserted them; she was fearful that if she relaxed her grasp, they would tear the curtains aside, and reveal what she dreaded to see. For on this night, when she had been gazing on the face which was present to her through her dreaming and waking hours, when her heart had been cruelly stirred by the words which had passed between Lizzie and herself, the thought of the white and pitiless snow was more than ever terrifying to her. It brought back to her with terrible force memories the creation of which had been productive of fatal results to the peace and happiness of her life. They never recurred to her without bringing with them visions of snow falling, or of lying still as death on hill and plain. The familiar faces in these scenes were few--a man she had loved; a man who loved her; a child--and at this point, all actual knowledge stopped. What followed was blurred and indistinct. She had ridden or had walked through the snow for months, as it seemed; there was no day--it was always night; the white plains were alive with light; the moon shone in the heavens; the white sprays flew from the horse's hoofs; through narrow lanes and trackless fields she rode and rode until a break occurred in the oppressive monotony. They are in a cottage, she and the man who loved her, and a sudden faintness comes upon her. Is it a creation of her fancy that she hears a woman's soft voice singing to her child, or is the sound really in the cottage? Another thing. Is she looking upon a baby lying in a cradle, and does she press her lips upon the sleeping infant's face? Fact and fancy are so strangely commingled--the glare of the white snow has so dazed her--the air is so thick with shadowy forms and faces--that she cannot separate the real from the ideal. But it is true that she is on the road again, and that the horse is plodding along, throwing the white sprays from his hoofs as before, until another change comes upon the scene. She and the man are toiling wearily through the snow, which she now looks upon as her enemy, toiling wearily, wearily onward, until they reach the gate of a church, when she feels her senses deserting her.