said; "why do you tempt me?"

"To get money for what is such splendid work," said Miss Franks, with a
gay laugh. "I am glad I tempt you, for you want money, you poor, proud,
queer girl. I like you--I like you much, but you must just let me help
you over this crisis. Give it to me, my dear."

She nearly snatched the manuscript from Florence, and thrust it into a
small leather bag which she wore at her side.

"Tom shall tell you what he thinks of it, and now ta! ta!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

A VESTIGE OF HOPE.

Miss Franks was heard tripping downstairs as fast as her feet could
carry her, and Florence covered her face with her hands.

"I have yielded," she said to herself. "What is to be done?" She got up
desperately.

"I must not think, that is evident," was her next sensation. She could
not take any more breakfast. She was too tired, too stunned, too
unnerved. She dressed herself slowly, and determined, after posting the
necessary money to her mother, to go the round of the different
registry-offices where she had entered her name.

"If there is any chance, any chance at all, I will tell Edith Franks the
truth to-night," she said to herself. "If there is no chance of my
earning money--why, this sum that mother has demanded of me means the
reducing of my store to seven pounds and some odd silver--I shall be
penniless before many weeks are over. What is to be done?"

Florence wrote a short letter to her mother. She made no allusions
whatever to the little woman's comments with regard to the dangers in
which she herself was placed.

"I am extremely likely to die of starvation, but there is no other
danger in my living alone in London," she thought, with a short laugh.
And then she went to a post-office and got the necessary postal orders,
and put them into the letter, and registered it and sent it off.

"Oh, Mummy, do be careful," she said, in the postscript; "it has been
rather hard to spare you this, though, of course I do it with a heart
and a half."

Afterwards poor Florence went the dreary round--from Harley-street to
Bond-street, from Bond-street to Regent-street, from Regent-street to
the Strand did she wander, and in each registry-office she received the
same reply: "There is nothing at all likely to suit you."

At last, in a little office in Fleet-street, she was handed the address
of a lady who kept a school, and who might be inclined to give Florence
a small post.

"The lady came in late last