ned Ruby.

'You send for your things to-morrow, for you don't come in here no
more. You ain't nothing to me no more nor no other girl. But I'd 've
saved you, if you'd but a' let me. As for you,'--and she looked at Sir
Felix,--'only because I've lodgings to let, and because of the lady
upstairs, I'd shake you that well, you'd never come here no more after
poor girls.' I do not think that she need have feared any remonstrance
from Mrs Hurtle, even had she put her threat into execution.

Sir Felix, thinking that he had had enough of Mrs Pipkin and her
lodger, left the house with Ruby on his arm. For the moment, Ruby had
been triumphant, and was happy. She did not stop to consider whether
her aunt would or would not open her door when she should return
tired, and perhaps repentant. She was on her lover's arm, in her best
clothes, and going out to have a dinner given to her. And her lover
had told her that he had ever so many things,--ever so many things to
say to her! But she would ask no impertinent questions in the first
hour of her bliss. It was so pleasant to walk with him up to
Pentonville;--so joyous to turn into a gay enclosure, half public-house
and half tea-garden; so pleasant to hear him order the good things,
which in his company would be so nice! Who cannot understand that even
an urban Rosherville must be an Elysium to those who have lately been
eating their meals in all the gloom of a small London underground
kitchen? There we will leave Ruby in her bliss.

At about nine that evening John Crumb called at Mrs Pipkin's, and was
told that Ruby had gone out with Sir Felix Carbury. He hit his leg a
blow with his fist, and glared out of his eyes. 'He'll have it hot
some day,' said John Crumb. He was allowed to remain waiting for Ruby
till midnight, and then, with a sorrowful heart, he took his
departure.

CHAPTER LXXI - JOHN CRUMB FALLS INTO TROUBLE

It was on a Friday evening, an inauspicious Friday, that poor Ruby
Ruggles had insisted on leaving the security of her Aunt Pipkin's
house with her aristocratic and vicious lover, in spite of the
positive assurance made to her by Mrs Pipkin that if she went forth in
such company she should not be allowed to return. 'Of course you must
let her in,' Mrs Hurtle had said soon after the girl's departure.
Whereupon Mrs Pipkin had cried. She knew her own softness too well to
suppose it to be possible that she could keep the girl out in the
streets all night; but