ill she was
ashamed to wait any longer, and then she walked about the streets till
three o'clock. At the stroke of the hour she returned, and was shown into
the manager's private room, where a dry, unsympathetic looking little man
was sitting before a big book. It was not the same man whom Augusta had
met before, and her heart sank proportionately.

What followed need not be repeated here. The manager listened to her
faltering tale with a few stereotyped expressions of sympathy, and, when
she had done, "regretted" that speculative loans were contrary to the
custom of the bank, and politely bowed her out.

It was nearly four o'clock upon a damp, drizzling afternoon--a November
afternoon--that hung like a living misery over the black slush of the
Birmingham streets, and would in itself have sufficed to bring the
lightest hearted, happiest mortal to the very gates of despair, when
Augusta, wet, wearied, and almost crying, at last entered the door of
their little sitting-room. She entered very quietly, for the
maid-of-all-work had met her in the passage and told her that Miss
Jeannie was asleep. She had been coughing very much about dinner-time,
but now she was asleep.

There was a fire in the grate, a small one, for the coal was economised
by means of two large fire-bricks, and on a table (Augusta's writing
table), placed at the further side of the room, was a paraffin-lamp
turned low. Drawn up in front, but a little to one side of the fire, was
a sofa, covered with red rep, and on the sofa lay a fair-haired little
form, so thin and fragile that it looked like the ghost or outline of a
girl, rather than a girl herself. It was Jeannie, her sick sister, and
she was asleep. Augusta stole softly up to look at her. It was a sweet
little face that her eyes fell on, although it was so shockingly thin,
with long, curved lashes, delicate nostrils, and a mouth shaped like a
bow. All the lines and grooves which the chisel of Pain knows so well how
to carve were smoothed out of it now, and in their place lay the shadow
of a smile.

Augusta looked at her and clenched her fists, while a lump rose in her
throat, and her grey eyes filled with tears. How could she get the money
to save her? The year before a rich man, a man who was detestable to
her, had wanted to marry her, and she would have nothing to say to him.
He had gone abroad, else she would have gone back to him and married
him--at a price. Marry him? yes she would marry him: