to visit in her stately, luxurious home,
when she followed him so far through those weary streets on the night
of the thunderstorm.

She could bear no more. Her physical system gave way, just as a tree
that has sustained crash after crash falls with the last well-directed
blow. She rolled her eyes, lifted both bare arms above her head, and
with a faint despairing cry, went down at Lady Bearwarden's feet,
motionless and helpless as the dead.

But assistance was at hand at last. A park-keeper helped to raise the
prostrate figure. An elderly gentleman volunteered to fetch a cab.
Amongst them they supported Dorothea to the gate and placed her in the
vehicle. The park-keeper touched his hat, the elderly gentleman made
a profusion of bows, and as many offers of assistance which were
declined, while Maud, soothing and supporting her charge, told the
driver where to stop. As they jingled and rattled away from the gate,
a pardonable curiosity prompted the elderly gentleman to inquire the
name of this beautiful Samaritan, clad in silks and satins, so
ready to succour the fallen and give shelter to the homeless. The
park-keeper took his hat off, looked in the crown, and put it on
again.

"I see her once afore under them trees," he said, "with a gentleman. I
see a many and I don't often take notice. But she's a rare sort, she
is! and as good as she's good-looking. I wish you a good-evening,
sir."

Then he retired into his cabin and ruminated on this "precious start,"
as he called it, during his tea.

Meantime, Maud took her charge home, and would fain have put her to
bed. For this sanatory measure, however, Dorothea, who had recovered
consciousness, seemed to entertain an unaccountable repugnance. She
consented, indeed, to lie down for an hour or two, but could not
conceal a wild, restless anxiety to depart as soon as possible.
Something more than the obvious astonishment of the servants,
something more than the incongruity of the situation, seemed prompting
her to leave Lady Bearwarden's house without delay and fly from the
presence of almost the first friend she had ever known in her life.

When the bustle and excitement consequent on this little adventure had
subsided, her ladyship found herself once more face to face with her
own sorrow, and the despondency she had shaken off during a time of
action gathered again all the blacker and heavier round her heart. She
was glad to find distraction in the arrival of a nameless