e hesitated. She hardly liked
to explain why,--did not explain wholly. But she did not say that she
had no friends who knew this address. She had but few relations in the
world, and her aunt had communicated 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 bu