had
paid her a week's wages and dismissed her. Her first astonished
questions having been met with silence by the honest but hard-grained
woman who kept the laundry, Ida had not condescended to any further
appeal. The fact was that the laundress had received a visit from a
certain Mrs. Sprowl, who, under pretence of making inquiries for the
protection of a young female friend, revealed the damaging points of
Ida's story, and gained the end plotted with Harriet Casti.

Several circumstances united to make this event disastrous to Ida. Her
wages were very little more than she needed for her week to week
existence, yet she had managed to save a shilling or two now and then.
The greater part of these small savings she had just laid out in some
new clothing, the reason for the expense being not so much necessity,
as a desire to be rather better dressed when she accompanied Waymark on
those little country excursions which had reestablished themselves of
late. By no means the smallest part of Ida's heroism was that involved
in this matter of external appearance. A beautiful woman can never be
indifferent to the way in which her beauty is arrayed. That Waymark was
not indifferent to such things she knew well, and often she suffered
from the thought that one strong means of attraction was lost to her.
If at one moment Ida was conscious of her claim to inspire a noble
enthusiasm, at another she fell into the saddest self-distrust, and, in
her hunger for love, would gladly have sought every humblest aid of
grace and adornment. So she had yielded to the needs of her heart, and
only this morning was gladdened by the charm of some new clothing which
became her well, and which Waymark would see in a day or two. It lay
there before her now that she returned home, and, in the first onset of
trouble, she sat down and cried over it.

She suffered the more, too, that there had been something of a falling
off of late in the good health she generally enjoyed. The day's work
seemed long and hard; she felt an unwonted need of rest. And these
things caused trouble of the mind. With scarcely an hour of depression
she had worked on through those months of solitude, supported by the
sense that every day brought an accession of the strength of purity,
that the dark time was left one more stage behind, and that trust in
herself was growing assured.

But it was harder than she had foreseen, to maintain reserve and
reticence when her heart was thr