with her alone since she came from
Europe. As for the boarding-house, "I had rather look for work," she
said bravely. "I have never promised to pay money when I did not know
how to obtain it; and that"--and here she took out fifty or sixty cents
from her purse--"and that is all now. In respectable boarding-houses,
when people come without luggage, they are apt to ask for an advance.
Or, at least," she added, with some pride, "I am apt to offer it."

I hastened to ask her to take all my little store; but I had to own that
I had not two dollars. I was sure, however, that my overcoat and the
dress-suit I wore would avail me something, if I thrust them boldly up
some spout. I was sure that I should be at work within a day or two. At
all events, I was certain of the cyclopaedia the next day. That should go
to old Gowan's,--in Fulton Street it was then,--"the moral centre of the
intellectual world," in the hour I got it. And at this moment, for the
first time, the thought crossed me, "If mine could only be the name
drawn, so that that foolish $5,000 should fall to me." In that case I
felt that Fausta might live in "a respectable boarding-house" till she
died. Of this, of course, I said nothing, only that she was welcome to
my poor dollar and a half, and that I should receive the next day some
more money that was due me.

"You forget, Mr. Carter," replied Fausta, as proudly as
before,--"you forget that I cannot borrow of you any more than of a
boarding-house-keeper. I never borrow. Please God, I never will. It must
be," she added, "that in a Christian city like this there is some
respectable and fit arrangement made for travellers who find themselves
where I am. What that provision is I do not know; but I will find out
what it is before this sun goes down."

I paused a moment before I replied. If I had been fascinated by this
lovely girl before, I now bowed in respect before her dignity and
resolution; and, with my sympathy, there was a delicious throb of
self-respect united, when I heard her lay down so simply, as principles
of her life, two principles on which I had always myself tried to live.
The half-expressed habits of my boyhood and youth were now uttered for
me as axioms by lips which I knew could speak nothing but right and
truth.

I paused a moment. I stumbled a little as I expressed my regret that she
would not let me help her,--joined with my certainty that she was in the
right in refusing,--and then, in the on