Alone on a Wide Sea, Volume III

The train I caught did not reach Bath till half-past eight in the evening. It was a tedious, melancholy journey, so sad to me that I never recall it without emotion. The moment I had kissed and said good-bye to Mrs. Lee, and entered the train and started, I felt utterly lonely and miserable, as though, indeed, I were friendless, without memory, childless and widowed, and a blind wanderer. My luggage consisted of a travelling bag. I was dressed in black and wore a thick veil, but even without that veil I should not have feared recognition. I had looked into the glass before I started, and _now_, being able to remember my face as it was when my husband and sister last beheld me at Piertown, I was very sure that both of them might stare me in the eyes for an hour at a time, and find nothing in my white hair and in my changed lineaments, and in the expression which grief and time had stamped upon my countenance, and in my white eyebrows and the appearance of the flesh of my face that wore no longer the bloom of my happy days to give life to any sort of imagination which might visit them from the tone of my voice or from some subtle quality in my looks.

As I have said, I arrived at Bath at half-past eight, wearied to the heart by the long journey, and drove to an old-fashioned hotel not very far from Milsom Street. I was too exhausted to walk, or even at that hour, after I had refreshed myself with a cup of tea, I would have crept forth and traversed the width of the city to view the home in which my little ones were resting. I went to the window and gazed into the street; there were brightly lighted shops opposite; the roadway shone with the light of gas lamps; many people were afoot and private carriages and vehicles of all sorts passed in plenty.