CHAPTER I

WHAT WILL BECOME OF ME?



A London dining-room was lighted with gas, which showed a table of
small dimensions, with a vase of somewhat dirty and dilapidated grasses
in the centre, and at one end a soup tureen, from which a gentleman had
helped himself and a young girl of about thirteen, without much
apparent consciousness of what he was about, being absorbed in a pile
of papers, pamphlets, and letters, while she on her side kept a book
pinned open by a gravy spoon. The elderly maid-servant, who set the
dishes before them, handed the vegetables and changed the plates,
really came as near to feeding the pair as was possible with people
above three years old.

The one was a dark, thin man, with a good deal of white in his thick
beard and scanty hair, the absence of which made the breadth of his
forehead the more remarkable. The girl would have shown an equally
remarkable brow, but that her dark hair was cut square over it, so as
to take off from its height, and give a heavy over-hanging look to the
upper part of the face, which below was tin and sallow, well-featured,
but with a want of glow and colour. The thick masses of dark hair were
plaited into a very long thick tail behind, hanging down over a black
evening frock, whose white trimmings were, like everything else about
the place, rather dingy. She was far less absorbed than her father,
and raised a quick, wistful brown eye whenever he made the least sound,
or shuffled his papers. Indeed, it seemed that she was reading in
order to distract her anxiety rather than for the sake of occupation.