But she knew the game was lost, and she walked out of the room and up-stairs without another word, but with a bitter consciousness in her heart that she had not played her cards well, that, though her downfall was unavoidable, she might have stood out for better terms for her departure.

She hated Dare, as she threw her clothes together into her trunks, and she hated Mrs.Smith, who watched her do so with folded hands and with a lofty smile; but most of all she hated Charles, whose voice came up to the open window as he talked to Dare's coachman, already at the door, about splints and sore backs.
Charles felt a momentary pity for the little woman when she came down at last with compressed lips, casting lightning glances at the grinning servants in the background, whom she had bullied and hectored over in the manner of people unaccustomed to servants, and who were rejoicing in the ignominy of her downfall.
Her boxes were put in--not carefully.
Charles came forward and lifted his cap, but she would not look at him.
Grasping a little hand-bag convulsively, she went down the steps, and got up, unassisted, into the dog-cart.
"You have left nothing behind, I hope ?" said Charles, civilly, for the sake of saying something.
"She have left nothing," said Mrs.Smith, swimming forward with dignity, "and she have also took nothing.

I have seen to that, Sir Charles." "Good-bye, then," said Charles.

"Right, coachman." Mrs.Carroll's eyes had been wandering upward to the old house rising above her with its sunny windows and its pointed gables.

Perhaps, after all the sordid shifts and schemes of her previous existence, she had imagined she might lead an easier and a more respectable life within those walls.