"you look
cold."

"No, miss, thank you. I'm not cold," was the faint reply. She was cold,
though, as well she might be with her poor, thin shawl, and open bonnet,
in such a bitter night as it was outside. And there was a rigid, sharp,
suffering look in her pinched features that betokened she might have
been hungry, too.

"Poor people don't mind the cold weather, miss," she said, with a weak
smile, her voice getting a little stronger. "They have to bear it, and
they get used to it."

She had not evidently borne it long enough to effect the point of
indifference. Netty looked at her with a tender pity. Dr. Renton thought
to himself--Hoh!--blazoning her poverty--manufacturing sympathy
already--the old trick--and steeled himself against any attacks of that
kind, looking jealously, meanwhile, at Netty.

"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said, "what is it this evening? I suppose you've
brought me my rent."

The little woman grew paler, and her voice seemed to fail on her
quivering lips. Netty cast a quick, beseeching look at her father.

"Nathalie, please to leave the room." We'll have no nonsense carried on
here, he thought, triumphantly, as Netty rose, and obeyed the stern,
decisive order, leaving the door ajar behind her.

He seated himself in his chair, and resolutely put his right leg up to
rest on his left knee. He did not look at his tenant's face, determined
that her piteous expressions (got up for the occasion, of course) should
be wasted on him.

"Well, Mrs. Miller," he said again.

"Dr. Renton," she began, faintly gathering her voice as she proceeded,
"I have come to see you about the rent. I am very sorry, sir, to have
made you wait, but we have been unfortunate."

"Sorry, ma'am," he replied, knowing what was coming; "but your
misfortunes are not my affair. We all have misfortunes, ma'am. But we
must pay our debts, you know."

"I expected to have got money from my husband before this, sir," she
resumed, "and I wrote to him. I got a letter from him to-day, sir, and
it said that he sent me fifty dollars a month ago, in a letter; and it
appears that the post-office is to blame, or somebody, for I never got
it. It was nearly three months' wages, sir, and it is very hard to lose
it. If it hadn't been for that, your rent would have been paid long ago,
sir."

"Don't believe a word of _that_ story," thought Dr. Renton,
sententiously.

"I thought, sir," she continued, emboldened by his silence, "that if you
would