She had already assumed her
night-apparel; and alter wandering like an unquiet spirit from her own
apartment to the sitting-room and back again, a thousand, thousand
times,--after reclining her exhausted frame and throbbing head against
the door of the ante-room, in the trust of catching the sound of his
well-known step upon the stairs, she threw herself down on the
sofa for a moment's respite. But in a few minutes she started up
again.--Surely that was _his_ voice, which reached her from some
passenger in the street below, some passenger humming an air from the
new Opera, according to Vavasor's custom, when returning flushed with
the excitement of success? Again and hurriedly did she prepare for his
reception,--again place his chair by the fire, his slippers beside
it; and stand with a beating heart and suspended breath, to await the
entrance of the truant. But, no! it was _not_ him. The wanderer had
hastened onwards to some happier home. The street was quiet again. She
would take a book and strive to beguile the tediousness of suspense.
"Dreary indeed is that hour of the twenty-four which may be said to
afford the true division between night and day; when even the latest
watcher has retired to rest, while the earliest artisans scarcely
yet rouse themselves for the renewal of their struggle with
existence;--when even the studious, the sorrowing, and the dissipated,
close their over-wearied eyes;--and when those who 'do lack, and
suffer hunger,' enjoy that Heaven-vouchsafed stupor affording the only
interim to their consciousness of want and woe.
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