A Waif's Progress by Rhoda Broughton — Read

The moon unexpectedly lighted Mr. Tancred home. As if she had something agreeable to show him, she had shoved and elbowed aside the smoke-coloured curtains, drawn so closely across the sky when he arrived, and though still vapourish and a little sickly, gave radiance enough by which to distinguish objects. At first her lamp seemed officious. He could find his way home blindfolded along the familiar path, but before the end of his walk he discovered a use for it.

The evening air was mild and mawkish, and it was not because he was chilly that he covered the ground quickly. It was unlikely -- scarcely possible -- that anything untoward could have happened during his hour's absence; yet he had heard something at the Dower House which made him eager to verify by his own eyesight the fact that the terrible charge committed to him was still safe, that he should surprise her as he did last Sunday, sampling his best cigarettes over the fire in the smoking-room, to which he had betaken himself earlier than her calculations had led her to expect, and where the austerity of his own manner had routed her, not in repentance for her theft, which at this moment she was probably repeating, but in confusion at its discovery.