He wrote down the address, and, handing it to Rachel, rang the bell.
This drove her to despair; evidently it never occurred to him that she
was faint with weariness and hunger, that she had nowhere to go for the
night, and not the price of a decent meal, much less a bed, in her
purse. And even now her pride prevented her from telling the truth; but
it would not silence her supreme desire.

"Oh!" she cried; "oh, may I not speak to your wife?"

"Not to-night, if you don't mind," replied Carrington, with his bow and
smile. "We can't both desert our guests."

"Only for a minute!" pleaded Rachel. "I wouldn't keep her more!"

"Not to-night," he repeated, with a broader smile, a clearer
enunciation, and a decision so obviously irrevocable that Rachel said no
more. But she would not see the hand that he could afford to hold out to
her now; and as for going near his chambers, never, never, though she
starved!

"No, I wouldn't have kept her," she sobbed in the street; "but she would
have kept me! I know her! I know her! She would have had pity on me, in
spite of him; but now I can never go near either of them again!"

Then where was she to go? God knew! No respectable hotel would take her
in without luggage or a deposit. What was she to do?

But while she wondered her feet were carrying her once more in the old
direction, and as she walked an idea came. She was very near the fatal
little street at the time. She turned about, and then to the left. In a