not a few honest people withal, and among them the
dark figures of policemen.

Greta's heart beat high that night. Her spirit was full of a new
alacrity. Every inch of the way, as they flew over the busy streets,
seemed to awake in her soul some fresh sensibility. She wondered where
the multitudes of people came from, and whither they were going--vast
oceans on oceans of humanity, flowing and ebbing without tide.

She wanted to alight a hundred times, and empty her pockets of all her
money. A blind man, playing a tin whistle, and leading a small dog held
by a long string, awoke her special pity; the plaintive look in the eye
of the cur was an object of peculiar sympathy. A filthy woman, reeling
drunk and bareheaded across the street, almost under the feet of the
horses, her discolored breast hanging bare, and a puny infant crying
feebly in her arms, was another occasion for solicitude. A tiny mite
that might have been a dirty boy, coiled up in a ball on a doorstep like
a starved cat, was an object of all but irresistible attraction. But she
dare not stop for an instant; and, at last, with this certainty, she lay
back and shut her eyes very resolutely, and wondered whether, after all,
it were not very selfish to be very happy.

The cab stopped with a jolt; they were at St. Pancras station.

"Has he come?" asked Greta, eagerly, and looked about her with eyes that
comprehended everything at a glance.

She could not see Paul, and when a porter opened the cab and helped her
to alight, it was on her tongue to ask the man if he had seen her
husband. But no, she would not do that. She must look for him herself,
so that she might be the first to see him. Oh, yes, she must be the very
first to see him, and she was now obstinately determined to ask no one.

The porter brought round the truck, and wheeled the luggage onto the
platform, and Greta and Mrs. Drayton followed it. Then the wide eyes
that half smiled and looked half afraid beneath their trembling lids
glanced anxiously around. No, Paul was not there.

"What is the time?" she asked, her eyes still wandering over the
bustling throng about her.

"Ten to twelve, miss," announced the porter.

"Oh," she said, with a sigh of relief, "then he will soon be here."

"Will you sit in the waiting-room, miss?" asked the porter; and almost
unconsciously she followed him when he led the way. Mrs. Drayton hobbled
behind her.

"What did he say about being ill?" she asked, when