loneliness in the face.

The trivial obligations of the moment came to her aid. Nursed
in idleness her grief would have mastered her; but the needs of the
shop and the back room, and the preparations for Evelina's
marriage, kept the tyrant under.

Miss Mellins, true to her anticipations, had been called on to
aid in the making of the wedding dress, and she and Ann Eliza were
bending one evening over the breadths of pearl-grey cashmere which
in spite of the dress-maker's prophetic vision of gored satin, had
been judged most suitable, when Evelina came into the room alone.

Ann Eliza had already had occasion to notice that it was a bad
sign when Mr. Ramy left his affianced at the door. It generally
meant that Evelina had something disturbing to communicate, and Ann
Eliza's first glance told her that this time the news was grave.

Miss Mellins, who sat with her back to the door and her head
bent over her sewing, started as Evelina came around to the
opposite side of the table.

"Mercy, Miss Evelina! I declare I thought you was a ghost,
the way you crep' in. I had a customer once up in Forty-ninth
Street--a lovely young woman with a thirty-six bust and a waist you
could ha' put into her wedding ring--and her husband, he crep' up
behind her that way jest for a joke, and frightened her
into a fit, and when she come to she was a raving maniac, and had
to be taken to Bloomingdale with two doctors and a nurse to hold
her in the carriage, and a lovely baby on'y six weeks old--and