effect on women, and dogs, and other domestic animals. It is only men who
are superior to kindness. Make your mind easy--I promise to take as much
care of myself as if I was the happiest woman living! Don't let me keep
you here, out of your bed. Which way are you going?"

Miserable wretch that I was, I had forgotten my mother--with the medicine
in my hand! "I am going home," I said. "Where are you staying? At the
inn?"

She laughed her bitter laugh, and pointed to the stone quarry. "There is
my inn for to-night," she said. "When I got tired of walking about, I
rested there."

We walked on together, on my way home. I took the liberty of asking her if
she had any friends.

"I thought I had one friend left," she said, "or you would never have met
me in this place. It turns out I was wrong. My friend's door was closed in
my face some hours since; my friend's servants threatened me with the
police. I had nowhere else to go, after trying my luck in your
neighborhood; and nothing left but my two-shilling piece and these rags on
my back. What respectable innkeeper would take _me_ into his house? I
walked about, wondering how I could find my way out of the world without
disfiguring myself, and without suffering much pain. You have no river in
these parts. I didn't see my way out of the world, till I heard you
ringing at the doctor's house. I got a glimpse at the bottles in the
surgery, when he let you in, and I thought of the laudanum directly. What
were you doing there? Who is that medicine for? Your wife?"

"I am not married!"

She laughed again. "Not married! If I was a little better dressed there
might be a chance for ME. Where do you live? Here?"

We had arrived, by this time, at my mother's door. She held out her hand
to say good-by. Houseless and homeless as she was, she never asked me to
give her a shelter for the night. It was my proposal that she should rest,
under my roof, unknown to my mother and my aunt. Our kitchen was built out
at the back of the cottage: she might remain there unseen and unheard
until the household was astir in the morning. I led her into the kitchen,
and set a chair for her by the dying embers of the fire. I dare say I was
to blame--shamefully to blame, if you like. I only wonder what _you_ would
have done in my place. On your word of honor as a man, would _you_ have
let that beautiful creature wander back to the shelter of the stone quarry
like a stray dog? God help the woman who is foo