"All in due time; unless, like Miss Rachel, you wish to tell me my story
yourselves. By-the-bye, how is that poor girl to-day?"

"Thoroughly knocked down. There is a sort of feverish lassitude about
her that makes them very anxious. They were hoping to persuade her to
see Mr. Frampton when Lady Temple heard last."

"Poor thing! it has been a sad affair for her. Well, I told you I should
go over this morning and see Mr. Grey, and judge if anything could
be done. I got to the Abbey at about eleven o'clock, and found the
policeman had just come back after serving the summons, with the news
that Mauleverer was gone."

"Gone!"

"Clean gone! Absconded from his lodgings, and left no traces behind him.
But, as to the poor woman, the policeman reported that she had been left
in terrible distress, with the child extremely ill, and not a penny, not
a thing to eat in the house. He came back to ask Mr. Grey what was to
be done; and as the suspicion of diphtheria made every one inclined to
fight shy of the house, I thought I had better go down and see what was
to be done. I knocked a good while in vain; but at last she looked out
of window, and I told her I only wanted to know what could be done for
her child, and would send a doctor. Then she told me how to open the
door. Poor thing! I found her the picture of desolation, in the midst of
the dreary kitchen, with the child gasping on her lap; all the pretence
of widowhood gone, and her hair hanging loose about her face, which was
quite white with hunger, and her great eyes looked wild, like the glare
of a wild beast's in a den. I spoke to her by her own name, and she
started and trembled, and said, 'Did Miss Alison tell you?' I said,
'Yes,' and explained who I was, and she caught me up half way: 'O yes,
yes, my lady's nephew, that was engaged to Miss Ermine!' And she looked
me full and searchingly in the face, Ermine, when I answered 'Yes.' Then
she almost sobbed, 'And you are true to her;' and put her hands over her
face in an agony. It was a very strange examination on one's constancy,
and I put an end to it by asking if she had any friends at home that I
could write to for her; but she cast that notion from her fiercely, and
said she had no friend, no one. He had left her to her fate, because the
child was too ill to be moved. And indeed the poor child was in such a
state that there was no thinking of anything else, and I went at once to
find a doctor and a nurse."

"Dipht