ems to be slowly dying, and I shouldn't wonder if it were of sheer
starvation; those models earn so little. Yesterday she fainted as she
stood--Michael is so thoughtless. He had to call me to give her some
wine, and then we sent the maid home with her. She lives in a poor
place, Hannah says, but quite decent and respectable. I shall surely go
and see the poor creature; but she looks such a desperate sort of woman,
her eyes glare quite ferociously sometimes. She might be angry--so I had
rather not be alone, if you will come, Miss Rothesay?"

Olive consented at once; there was in her a certain romance which,
putting all sympathy aside, quite gloried in such an adventure.

They walked for a mile or two until they reached a miserable street by
the river-side; but Miss Meliora had forgotten the number. They must
have returned, their quest unsatisfied, had not Olive seen a little
girl leaning out of an upper window,--her ragged elbows on the sill, her
elf-like black eyes watching the boats up and down the Thames.

"I know that child," Olive said; "it is the poor woman's. She left it
in the hall one day at Woodford Cottage, and I noticed it from its black
eyes and fair hair. I remember, too--for I asked--its singular and very
pretty name, _Christal_."

Talking thus, they mounted the rickety staircase, and inquired for Mrs.
Manners. The door of the room was flung open from without, with a noise
that would have broken any torpor less deep than that into which its
wretched occupant had fallen.

"_Ma mie_ is asleep; don't wake her or she'll scold," said Christal
jumping down from the window, and interposing between Miss Vanbrugh and
the woman who was called Mrs. Manners.

She was indeed a very beautiful woman, though her beauty was on a grand
scale. She had flung herself, half-dressed, upon what seemed a heap of
straw, with a blanket thrown over. As she lay there, sleeping heavily,
her arm tossed above her head, the large but perfect proportions of her
form reminded Olive of the reclining figure in the group of the "Three
Fates."

But there was in the prematurely old and wasted face something that told
of a wrecked life. Olive, prone to romance-weaving, wondered whether
nature had in a mere freak invested an ordinary low-born woman with the
form of the ancient queens of the world, or whether within that grand
body lay ruined an equally grand soul.

Miss Meliora did not think about anything of the sort; but merely
that her