"I wouldn't keep her more!"
"Not to-night," he repeated, with a broader smile, a clearer
enunciation, and a decision so obviously irrevocable that Rachel said no
more. But she would not see the hand that he could afford to hold out to
her now; and as for going near his chambers, never, never, though she
starved!
"No, I wouldn't have kept her," she sobbed in the street; "but she would
have kept me! I know her! I know her! She would have had pity on me, in
spite of him; but now I can never go near either of them again!"
Then where was she to go? God knew! No respectable hotel would take her
in without luggage or a deposit. What was she to do?
But while she wondered her feet were carrying her once more in the old
direction, and as she walked an idea came. She was very near the fatal
little street at the time. She turned about, and then to the left. In a
few moments she was timorously knocking at the door of a house with a
card in the window.
"It's you!" cried the woman who came, almost shutting the door in
Rachel's face, leaving just space enough for her own.
"You have a room to let," said Rachel, steadily.
"But not to you," said the woman, quickly; and Rachel was not
surprised, the other was so pale, so strangely agitated.
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