This was the persuasion in which she had been brought up. And it is impossible to tell what horror and misery the girl had gone through, waiting for her young brother’s return on his first night in London. She had been waiting a long time, and she had gone over in her own mind all the dismal expectations which an anxious woman, bitterly acquainted with one form of dissipation, can turn over in the dreadful suspense of a long evening spent in watching for the return of one who comes not, and whose absence can be accounted for only by some catastrophe. A world of old recollections had come rolling up before her distracted eyes. She had seen him reeling along the street, stumbling in, with wild eyes and a stammering voice, with all the miserable signs upon him of that vice which, in its beginnings at least, is no sin, means no harm, and yet is the most degrading and destructive of all vices. No words can tell the tortures which a woman goes through, to whom such vigils are habitual. They were perhaps even more terrible now by being purely imaginary. For fact, however frightful, brings into action all the subtle forces of mercy, the attempts to account for and excuse, the natural yearnings of the heart over the sinner: whereas in imagination there is no alleviation, and the first fall carries with it a tragic prophecy of utter destruction. When John had appeared, with his paleness, with the lingering traces of that exhilaration which Montressor’s drink had left still in his eyes, and with the cut showing under his disordered hair, Susie had felt for a moment as if all were over, and the tragic conclusion, so long foreseen, coming to pass before her eyes.