ould not see the hand that he could afford to hold out to
her now; and as for going near his chambers, never, never, though she
starved!

"No, I wouldn't have kept her," she sobbed in the street; "but she would
have kept me! I know her! I know her! She would have had pity on me, in
spite of him; but now I can never go near either of them again!"

Then where was she to go? God knew! No respectable hotel would take her
in without luggage or a deposit. What was she to do?

But while she wondered her feet were carrying her once more in the old
direction, and as she walked an idea came. She was very near the fatal
little street at the time. She turned about, and then to the left. In a
few moments she was timorously knocking at the door of a house with a
card in the window.

"It's you!" cried the woman who came, almost shutting the door in
Rachel's face, leaving just space enough for her own.

"You have a room to let," said Rachel, steadily.

"But not to you," said the woman, quickly; and Rachel was not
surprised, the other was so pale, so strangely agitated.

"But why?" she asked. "I have been acquitted--thanks partly to your own
evidence--and yet you of all women will not take me in! Do you mean to
tell me that you actually think I did it still?"

Rachel fully expected an affirmative. She was prepared for that opinion
now from all the world; but for once a surprise was in store for her.
The pale woman shifted her eyes, then raised them doggedly, and the look
in them brought a sudden glow to Rachel's heart.

"No, I don't think that, and never did," said the one independent
witness for the defence. "But others do, and I am too near where it
happened; it might empty my house and keep it empty."

Rachel seized her hand.

"Never mind, never mind," she whispered. "It is better, ten thousand
times, that you should believe in me, that any woman should! Thank you,
and God bless you, for that!"

She was turning away, when she faced about upon the steps, gazing past
the woman who believed in her, along the passage beyond, an unspoken
question beneath the tears in her eyes.

"He is not here," said the landlady, quickly.

"But he did get over it?"

"So we hope; but he was at death's door that morning, and for days and
weeks. Now he's abroad again--I'm sure I don't know where."

Rachel said good-night, and this time the door not only shut before she
had time to change her mind again, but she heard the bolts shot as she