can eat and drink. I
thought nothing then but of my Julie. I stopped not on the road to
make merchandise--what you call a bargain--about my coming. No; I
came at once, leaving all things--my little affairs--in confusion,
because my Julie wanted me to come! It was in the Winter. Oh, that
Winter! My poor bones shall never forget it. They are racked still
with the pains which your savage winds have given them. And now it
is Autumn. Ten months have I been here, and I have eaten up my
little substance. Oh, Julie, you, who are so rich, do not know what
is the poverty of your Sophie!

A lawyer have told me--not a French lawyer, but an English--that
somebody should pay me everything. He says the law would give it me.
He have offered me the money himself, just to let him make an
action. But I have said no. No, Sophie will not have an action with
her Julie. She would scorn that; and so the lawyer went away. But if
my Julie will think of this, and will remember her Sophie--how much
she have expended, and now at last there is nothing left. She must
go and beg among her friends. And why? Because she have loved her
Julie too well. You, who are so rich, would miss it not at all. What
would two-three hundred pounds be to my Julie?

Shall I come to you? Say so; say so, and I will go at once, if I did
crawl on my knees. Oh, what a joy to see my Julie! And do not think
I will trouble you about money. No, your Sophie will be too proud
for that. Not a word will I say but to love you. Nothing will I do
but to print one kiss on my Julie's forehead, and then to retire
forever, asking God's blessing for her dear head.

Thine-always thine,

Sophie.

Lady Ongar, when she received this letter, was a little perplexed by it,
not feeling quite sure in what way she might best answer it. It was the
special severity of her position that there was no one to whom, in such
difficulties, she could apply for advice. Of one thing she was quite
sure--that, willingly, she would never again see her devoted Sophie. And
she knew that the woman deserved no money from her; that she had
deserved none, but had received much. Every assertion in her letter was
false. No one had wished her to come, and the expense of her coming had
been paid for her over and over again. Lady Ongar knew that she had
money, and knew also that she would have had immediate recour