She could neither be stilled upon it, nor herself exhaust its urgings to self-reproach, though she finally took up another theme temporarily.

Upon an unusually violent outbreak of her husband's, in denunciation of the runaway, she cried out faintly that he was cruel; and further wearied her broken voice with details of Walter's beauty as a baby, and of his bedtime pieties throughout his infancy.
So the hot night wore on.

Three had struck before Mrs.Adams was got to bed; and Alice, returning to her own room, could hear her father's bare feet thudding back and forth after that.

"Poor papa!" she whispered in helpless imitation of her mother.

"Poor papa! Poor mama! Poor Walter! Poor all of us!" She fell asleep, after a time, while from across the hall the bare feet still thudded over their changeless route; and she woke at seven, hearing Adams pass her door, shod.