ld she do?

She felt restless and uncomfortable.

"I did wrong ever to consent to it, but now that I have begun I must go
on taking in the golden sovereigns," she said to herself, and she took
up the cheque for eighteen guineas, looked at it eagerly, and put it
into her purse. Starvation was indeed now far removed. Florence could
help her mother and support herself; but, nevertheless, although she was
now well fed and well clothed and comfortably housed, she at that
moment had the strongest regret of all her life for the old hungry days
when she had been an honest, good girl, repentant of the folly of her
youth, and able with a clear conscience to look all men in the face.

"But as I have begun I must go on," she said to herself. "To court
discovery now would be madness. I cannot, I will not court it. Come what
may, I must write that article. How am I to do it, and in twenty-four
hours? Oh, if I could only telegraph to Bertha!"

CHAPTER XXIX.

ALMOST BETRAYED.

Florence spent a restless night. She rose early in the morning, avoided
Edith, and went off as soon as she could to the British Museum. She
resolved to write her article in the reading-room. She was soon supplied
with books and pamphlets on the subject, and began to read them. Her
brain felt dull and heavy; her restless night had not improved her
mental powers; try hard as she would, she could not think. She had never
been a specially good writer of the Queen's English, but she had never
felt worse or more incapable of thought than she did this morning. Write
something, however, she must. Tossed about as she had been in the world,
she had not studied the thoughts of men and women on this special
subject. She could not, therefore, seize the salient points from the
pamphlets and books which she glanced through.

The paper was at last produced, and was not so good as the ordinary
schoolgirl's essay. It was feeble, without metaphor, without point,
without illustration. She did not dare to read it over twice.

"It must go," she said to herself; "I can make up for it by a specially
brilliant story of Bertha's for the next number. What will Mr. Franks
say? I only trust he won't find me out."

She directed her miserable manuscript to Thomas Franks, Esq., at the
office of the _Argonaut_, and as she left the museum late in the
afternoon of that day dropped the packet into the pillar-box. She then
went home.

Edith Franks was waiting for her, and Edith h