She glanced at the clock and started to see how late it was. "Where can he be? I believe I am getting superstitious; sitting all alone in this dark room is enough to give one the jumps; but somehow I can't help feeling that there is something ominous in this ridiculous poem I have been reading. 'Death, death in the streets.... Well, I care not; it is better so.' Pooh! what nonsense! I am a fool," she shivered and looked uneasily around the room; then she rose from her chair, and, drawing aside the curtain, peered out of the window at the deserted court. "Where can he be? He has never been late like this before. He has been drinking like a madman for the last few days. Who knows?--perhaps he may have foretold his own end in those verses. He may even now be dying.... But this is sheer folly; he can look after himself. But I must get rid of these blues. Ah! here is his beloved brandy bottle." With the aid of some spirits and water, she contrived to dispel her nervousness. But still he did not come. She fidgeted about the rooms vainly seeking something to amuse her. At intervals she would walk up to the mirror, and contemplate the image of her face with a close scrutiny to see how the wrinkles about her eyes were getting on--a common trick of this unfortunate being, whose whole pleasure in life, whose every interest hung on her youth and beauty, who was haunted by the perpetual dread of age and ugliness. For six hours she waited in the chambers, but she would not go--she would see the end of this. One o'clock boomed out in melancholy tones from the spire of St. Clements, answered by Big Ben in the distance, and a dozen city churches. A quarter of an hour afterwards there was a hurried rush of someone up the stairs, then a long fumbling at the keyhole. She went to the door and opened it, and the aspect of her lover, as he stood there with the light of the passage lamp falling on his distorted features was so terrible, that she shrunk back in fear. "Don't be frightened, Edith, I won't hurt you--only drunk," and he laughed discordantly as he pushed by her without further greeting, without offering to kiss her, for which last omission she was thankful. He entered the sitting-room, threw himself into a chair by the table, and buried his head in his hands, as he placed his elbows on the wine-stained mahogany. What a contrast between this scene and one three years before! The chambers were the same, though not so tidy as of old; then it was summer. It was now winter, with no fire in the grate, and a cheerless look about the place. Then there were two, a man and a woman together--a man young, in the prime of life, happy, hopeful, and a girl of noble instincts, and lovely as the young Aphrodite. Now it was the same man but how changed, how fallen! and the woman was another--the evil genius of the man, just as the first woman might have been his good genius.