Chapter I

SHE waited, Kate Croy, for her father to come
in, but he kept her unconscionably, and there
were moments at which she showed herself, in the
glass over the mantel, a face positively pale with
the irritation that had brought her to the point of
going away without sight of him. It was at this
point, however, that she remained; changing her
place, moving from the shabby sofa to the arm
chair upholstered in a glazed cloth that gave at
once she had tried it the sense of the slippery and
of the sticky. She had looked at the sallow prints
on the walls and at the lonely magazine, a year old,
that combined, with a small lamp in coloured glass
and a knitted white centre-piece wanting in fresh
ness, to enhance the effect of the purplish cloth on
the principal table; she had above all, from time to
time, taken a brief stand on the small balcony to
which the pair of long windows gave access. The
vulgar little street, in this view, offered scant relief
from the vulgar little room; its main office was to
suggest to her that the narrow black house-fronts,

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v?