coarse, handsome, showily-dressed girl, looking
intently into his face. He shook her angrily off.

'You needn't be so proud, Mr. Smith; I've had my hand on the arm of
as good as you. Ah, you needn't start! I know you--I know you, I
say, well enough. You used to be with him. Where is he?'

'Whom do you mean?'

'He!' answered the girl, with a fierce, surprised look, as if there
could be no one else in the world.

'Colonel Bracebridge,' whispered Tregarva.

'Ay, he it is! And now walk further off, bloodhound! and let me
speak to Mr. Smith. He is in Norway,' she ran on eagerly. 'When
will he be back? When?'

'Why do you want to know?' asked Lancelot.

'When will he be back?'--she kept on fiercely repeating the
question; and then burst out,--'Curse you gentlemen all! Cowards!
you are all in a league against us poor girls! You can hunt alone
when you betray us, and lie fast enough then? But when we come for
justice, you all herd together like a flock of rooks; and turn so
delicate and honourable all of a sudden--to each other! When will
he be back, I say?'

'In a month,' answered Lancelot, who saw that something really
important lay behind the girl's wildness.

'Too late!' she cried, wildly, clapping her hands together; 'too
late! Here--tell him you saw me; tell him you saw Mary; tell him
where and in what a pretty place, too, for maid, master, or man!
What are you doing here?'

'What is that to you, my good girl?'

'True. Tell him you saw me here; and tell him, when next he hears
of me, it will be in a very different place.'

She turned and vanished among the crowd. Lancelot almost ran out
into the night,--into a triad of fights, two drunken men, two
jealous wives, and a brute who struck a poor, thin, worn-out woman,
for trying to coax him home. Lancelot rushed up to interfere, but a
man seized his uplifted arm.

'He'll only beat her all the more when he getteth home.'

'She has stood that every Saturday night for the last seven years,
to my knowledge,' said Tregarva; 'and worse, too, at times.'

'Good God! is there no escape for her from her tyrant?'

'No, sir. It's only you gentlefolks who can afford such luxuries;
your poor man may be tied to a harlot, or your poor woman to a
ruffian, but once done, done for ever.'

'Well,' thought Lancelot, 'we English have a characteristic way of
proving the holiness of the marriage tie. The angel of Justice and
Pity c