It was the same everywhere, not so kindly expressed. At one o'clock Mary returned to her lodgings utterly tired out and ready to cry in the bitterness of her disappointment. How hard people were to one another, she thought. It never occurred to her that this hardness had been her own great besetting sin in the past. She was even inclined to quarrel with Connie because the latter's prophecy had come so cruelly true. But Connie was not in yet, and therefore Mary had to fight out her trouble alone. Still, she had learned already a deeper and more important lesson than she was aware of. She began to see that there was a world beyond the narrow limit of the Dashwood horizon. There were other men and women living in the world quite as worthy of respect. Mary took her sketches and dropped them one by one slowly into the empty grate. Then she put a match to them and watched them burn away to ashes. It was a full and complete confession of failure, and Mary felt all the better for it. She rang the bell for a glass of milk to drink with her frugal meal that was already set out on the table. Nobody came in reply to her ring. Mary was not aware that it was an understood thing in a general way that nobody rang the bell except at stated times such as just after breakfast and the like. In houses of that class the lodgers were expected to be away all day more or less. Otherwise, they were really obliged to look after themselves. After the third ring Mary went downstairs to investigate. So far as she could judge the house was deserted. The dingy first floor smelt horribly of cheap, stale, cigar smoke. The sordidness of the whole thing struck Mary with peculiar and unpleasant force. It was all so totally different to what she had been accustomed to. She wondered where Mrs. Speed was to be found. Then voices came from the dining-room, voices raised in anger. A man and a woman there were quarrelling violently. It seemed to Mary that the man's voice was familiar to her, but she could not be quite certain as yet. She made up her mind to go down into the basement--the dark, warm basement that seemed to reek with the ghastly smells of bygone meals. Mary wondered how people could live in an atmosphere like that. She was standing in doubt at the head of the kitchen stairs when from the dining-room she heard her own name. There was no mistaking the allusion to Dashwood. Quite naturally Mary stood to listen. It was the man in the dining-room who was speaking. "I tell you I must have it," he said. "What reason have you got to be fond of the name of Dashwood? It never brought us any good. If Ralph Dashwood had not been a fool, and you had played your cards right, you might be living at the dower house now, with a handsome income and a staff of servants to wait upon you." The woman made some kind of reply that Mary could not quite catch, though she knew by the choke in the voice that she was sobbing. The man resumed.