four o'clock
`` The best thing about one 's grave is that it will be level , '' she was heard once to say . Somebody muses a little here , -- she is to be married this winter . There is a face just behind her whose fixed eyes repel and attract you ; there may be more love than guilt in them , more despair than either . Had you stood in some unobserved corner of Essex Street , at four o'clock one Saturday afternoon towards the last of November , 1859 , watching the impatient stream pour out of the Pemberton Mill , eager with a saddening eagerness for its few holiday hours , you would have observed one girl who did not bound . She was slightly built , and undersized ; her neck and shoulders were closely muffled , though the day was mild ; she wore a faded scarlet hood which heightened the pallor of what must at best have been a pallid face . It was a sickly face , shaded off with purple shadows , but with a certain wiry nervous strength about the muscles of the mouth and chin : it would have been a womanly , pleasant mouth , had it not been crossed by a white scar , which attracted more of one 's attention than either the womanliness or pleasantness . Her eyes had light long lashes , and shone through them steadily .