"But we are going to talk over your plans."

"No! I will go at once. It is better. I must."

Mr. Hudson now began to perceive more or less clearly what was the reason of this sudden haste, but he temporised.

"Now sit down quietly and let us talk things over. Believe me, I really wish you well. Do you mistrust me?"

"No! no!" with her eyes filling with tears--"no, I do not. It is not that."

"You can go, Mrs. Jones," he said to the laundress who still loitered about.

When this woman was outside the chambers Mary continued, half sobbing, and in tones that made the young man's heart feel very queer.

"You are very good to me, but I know our talk will end in nothing; how can it? I am _very_ grateful to you. Please don't think I am ungrateful, Mr. Hudson; but I feel we had better separate at once."

He looked steadily into the beautiful frank eyes for quite a minute, then said sadly, in a low voice,

"Miss Grimm, Mary, I think you are quite right; a talk will do little good, it may do harm. Yes, it is sure to do harm."

The young man, though a rake, was far from devoid of generosity, and yet it may be that he would not have given her up like this were it not for certain after thoughts.

The girl, he imagined, poor little thing, would in all probability soon be his, but he would not tempt her. To deliberately ruin her was a crime his conscience rather stuck at. No, he would let her have her chance of being respectable. If she could not find any honest employment, as was most likely, why he would look after her and make her as happy as he could as his mistress. Mr. Hudson was a casuist, as indeed are ninety-nine men out of a hundred in these matters.

So he continued, "Mary, you are right. I respect your motives. I am not a good man and you are better out of my way. But remember you have a friend in me. You must promise to come to me if you are in any distress."

"Promise," he said, taking both her hands in his and looking into her eyes, "promise."

She returned his gaze with one candid and earnest, and after a pause, perhaps knowing exactly what she was undertaking, what this coming back to him in case of failure to find employment meant, she replied in a half-inaudible voice:

"I promise."

"Thank you; remember that I will always help you. Write if you don't like to come here. And now I am going to lend you a little money which will keep you going till something turns up," and he put a sovereign, all he had just then, in her hand.

She took it. For a few moments she could say nothing, then she cried out, "G.o.d bless you! you are indeed good to me. I don't deserve such kindness, I shall never forget you. I don't know how I--" and she burst into tears.

She, Mary Grimm, the cold and hardened child, who had never cried through long years of cruel treatment, was now softened and wept like a woman.

Hudson felt his blood boiling within him as he looked at the girl. Short as had been the acquaintance, he was filled with a real pa.s.sion, he was beginning to be vehemently in love with the little waif.

He took her hand and kissed it, and would have covered her face with fiery kisses next, for he had lost all his self-control, when Mary tore herself away from him, rushed through the door, and was gone.

Hudson's was, as has been stated, an impetuous and amorous nature. To be in love with some woman had become a necessity of his existence. Now this weak-minded young gentleman did not happen at this period to have an object for his affections, a condition that made him restless and unhappy. He had been vainly trying to fill up this want of late, so that it is not so very wonderful that he fell, at such short notice, into an infatuated pa.s.sion for this piquante young girl.

Throughout the day his thoughts were always of her--"Shall I see her again?--Yes, she has promised to come if she fails to find work--She must fail ... but no, I have a presentiment that she will never come."

His restlessness, his changing fits of depression and exultation, were the marvel of all his friends who met him that afternoon; but this love-sick mood did not trouble his volatile mind for long, and subsided rapidly, as might be expected under all the circ.u.mstances.

Mary wiped her eyes and hurried down the stairs, blushing deeply, and bitterly feeling her degradation when two young clerks, standing outside a room on the second floor, laughed and made some remark as she pa.s.sed by.

She knew that appearances were against a young girl coming out of a barrister's chambers at 10 a.m.; and not till she was well out of the Temple, and away from the glances of the lawyers, porters, and laundresses did she collect her wits and walk with due calmness of mien.

She went slowly up the Strand deliberating--she had one pound. This would keep her for some time--until she found something to do; but she must busy herself at once to find this vague something.

She knew where there was a small registry office for domestics in a street in Bloomsbury. Mrs. Grimm had on one occasion procured a servant from it, and Mary, who had always entertained some vague idea of running away at some time or other--the sole hope that buoyed up her youth--had treasured up the address.

So she went to this place and found there a motherly old lady in blue spectacles, who happened not to be one of those grasping hags who keep so many of the inferior cla.s.s of registry offices, defrauding poor servant girls of their hard-earned wages.

Mary told her wants--she wished a place as housemaid, or even maid-of-all-work if the family was a small one.

The old lady looked kindly at the girl, explained the system on which her business was conducted, and opening a large ledger asked:

"Your name, my dear?"

"Mary Barnes." The answer came out readily enough considering that it had not occurred to her before to choose a new name.

"Your address?" continued the dame, who transcribed the answers in a deliberate round hand in the book before her.

This staggered Mary, and unable to draw on her imagination quickly enough, she blurted out her father's address.

"Ah indeed," said her interlocutor, "Mrs. Grimm; I once provided her with a girl--let me see--three years ago I think; and how long have you been in her service?"

"Two years, ma'am."

"As housemaid?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"That is very good, my dear; and why are you leaving her?"

To this query her reply was a fairly truthful one, though she stammered over it a good deal.

"The work was too hard; my step----Mrs. Grimm was very unkind, indeed cruel."

"Yes," went on the old lady thoughtfully, "yes, I remember her. She appeared a disagreeable woman--very much so indeed; that's how I haven't forgotten all about her, what with the many hundreds of mistresses I see--and let me see, you are still living with her you say?"

"Yes, my month is not up for three days yet," replied Mary, who was now getting into a good glib way of lying--small blame to the poor thing.

"Will she give you a good character?"

"Oh yes."

"Well, I do think I know of a place for you, a very kind lady living alone with only her crippled son; she wants just such a one as you seem to be. She's a friend of mine. I know her well, and if you do well by her, she'll do well by you, my dear. Here is her address; you can go and see her for yourself," and she wrote on a piece of note-paper the address, which was somewhere in the direction of Maida Vale.

Mary thanked her and went out. How vexed she was that she had been such a fool as to be surprised into giving her father's address. It would be no good going to the place after that. Fancy her employer writing to her stepmother for her character, and she laughed aloud at the idea, to the great scandal of an old maid and two pug dogs who were pa.s.sing her at the moment of this indecent ebullition.

But on second thoughts Mary decided that she would go to the address. If the lady in question was really so kind, might she not take her without a character? Why not tell her the whole story and throw herself on her generosity? Anyhow, she would call and see what she could make of it--there could be no harm in that.

Poor Tommy Hudson would have hardly liked to know how little he was in this girl's thoughts this day, genuinely grateful though she was.