ufus admitted it cautiously. "The thing might happen," was all he said.

"And his friends might come and see him," she went on; her face still
turned away, and her voice sinking into dull subdued tones. "Nobody
comes here now. You see I understand you. When shall I go away? I had
better not say good-bye, I suppose?--it would only distress him. I could
slip out of the house, couldn't I?"

Rufus began to feel uneasy. He was prepared for tears--but not for such
resignation as this. After a little hesitation, he joined her at the
window. She never turned towards him; she still looked out straight
before her; her bright young face had turned pitiably rigid and pale. He
spoke to her very gently; advising her to think of what he had said, and
to do nothing in a hurry. She knew the hotel at which he stayed when he
was in London; and she could write to him there. If she decided to begin
a new life in another country, he was wholly and truly at her service.
He would provide a passage for her in the same ship that took him back
to America. At his age, and known as he was in his own neighbourhood,
there would be no scandal to fear. He could get her reputably and
profitably employed, in work which a young girl might undertake. "I'll
be as good as a father to you, my poor child," he said, "don't think
you're going to be friendless, if you leave Amelius. I'll see to that!
You shall have honest people about you--and innocent pleasure in your
new life."

She thanked him, still with the same dull tearless resignation. "What
will the honest people say," she asked, "when they know who I am?"

"They have no business to know who you are--and they shan't know it."

"Ah! it comes back to the same thing," she said. "You must deceive the
honest people, or you can do nothing for me. Amelius had better have
left me where I was! I disgraced nobody, I was a burden to nobody,
_there._ Cold and hunger and ill-treatment can sometimes be merciful
friends, in their way. If I had been left to them, they would have laid
me at rest by this time." She turned to Rufus, before he could speak to
her. "I'm not ungrateful, sir; I'll think of it, as you say; and I'll
do all that a poor foolish creature can do, to be worthy of the interest
you take in me." She lifted her hand to her head, with a momentary
expression of pain. "I've got a dull kind of aching here," she said; "it
reminds me of my old life, when I was sometimes beaten on the head. May
I go and lie