it that can
take you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is
there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left,
to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!'

'When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are,' replied the
girl steadily, 'give away your hearts, love will carry you all
lengths--even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers,
everything, to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but
the coffinlid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital
nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place
that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to
cure us? Pity us, lady--pity us for having only one feeling of the
woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a
comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering.'

'You will,' said Rose, after a pause, 'take some money from me, which
may enable you to live without dishonesty--at all events until we meet
again?'

'Not a penny,' replied the girl, waving her hand.

'Do not close your heart against all my efforts to help you,' said
Rose, stepping gently forward. 'I wish to serve you indeed.'

'You would serve me best, lady,' replied the girl, wringing her hands,
'if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think
of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would be
something not to die in the hell in which I have lived. God bless you,
sweet lady, and send as much happiness on your head as I have brought
shame on mine!'

Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away;
while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which
had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank
into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts.

CHAPTER XLI

CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SUPRISES, LIKE
MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE

Her situation was, indeed, one of no common trial and difficulty. While
she felt the most eager and burning desire to penetrate the mystery in
which Oliver's history was enveloped, she could not but hold sacred the
confidence which the miserable woman with whom she had just conversed,
had reposed in her, as a young and guileless girl. Her words and
manner had touched Rose Maylie's heart; and, mingled with her love for
her young charge, and scarcely less intense in its tr