It was in this terrible emergency that she had—­driven thereto by her agony of mind—­tried to get something beyond her strict and legal due out of Meeson’s—­Meeson’s that had made hundreds and hundreds out of her book and paid her fifty pounds.  We know how she fared in that attempt.  On leaving their office, Augusta bethought her of her banker.  Perhaps he might be willing to advance something.  It was a horrible task, but she determined to undertake it; so she walked to the bank and asked to see the manager.  He was out, but would be in at three o’clock.  She went to a shop near and got a bun and glass of milk, and waited till she was ashamed to wait any longer, and then she walked about the streets till three o’clock.  At the stroke of the hour she returned, and was shown into the manager’s private room, where a dry, unsympathetic looking little man was sitting before a big book.  It was not the same man whom Augusta had met before, and her heart sank proportionately.

What followed need not be repeated here.  The manager listened to her faltering tale with a few stereotyped expressions of sympathy, and, when she had done, “regretted” that speculative loans were contrary to the custom of the bank, and politely bowed her out.

It was nearly four o’clock upon a damp, drizzling afternoon—­a November afternoon—­that hung like a living misery over the black slush of the Birmingham streets, and would in itself have sufficed to bring the lightest hearted, happiest mortal to the very gates of despair, when Augusta, wet, wearied, and almost crying, at last entered the door of their little sitting-room.  She entered very quietly, for the maid-of-all-work had met her in the passage and told her that Miss Jeannie was asleep.  She had been coughing very much about dinner-time, but now she was asleep.

There was a fire in the grate, a small one, for the coal was economised by means of two large fire-bricks, and on a table (Augusta’s writing table), placed at the further side of the room, was a paraffin-lamp turned low.  Drawn up in front, but a little to one side of the fire, was a sofa, covered with red rep, and on the sofa lay a fair-haired little form, so thin and fragile that it looked like the ghost or outline of a girl, rather than a girl herself.  It was Jeannie, her sick sister, and she was asleep.  Augusta stole softly up to look at her.  It was a sweet little face that her eyes fell on, although it was so shockingly thin, with long, curved lashes, delicate nostrils, and a mouth shaped like a bow.  All the lines and grooves which the chisel of Pain knows so well how to carve were smoothed out of it now, and in their place lay the shadow of a smile.

Augusta looked at her and clenched her fists, while a lump rose in her throat, and her grey eyes filled with tears.  How could she get the money to save her?  The year before a rich man, a man who was detestable to her, had wanted to marry her, and she would have nothing to say to him.  He had gone abroad, else she would have gone back to him and married him—­at a price.  Marry him? yes she would marry him:  she would do anything for money to take her sister away!  What did she care for herself when her darling was dying—­dying for the want of two hundred pounds!