“Perhaps it’s just as well, ma’am,” Matilda began tremulously as soon as they were in the street, before Mrs. De Peyster’s black storm could burst.  “How much would that suite have been?”

“Perhaps fifty dollars a day.”

“I only just now thought about it—­but—­but please, ma’am, did you happen to bring your purse?”

“My purse!” Mrs. De Peyster stopped short.  “Matilda!”—­in a voice chilled with dismay—­“I never thought of my purse until this moment!  There wasn’t time!  I haven’t a cent!”

“And after paying for the cab, ma’am, I have only a little over fifteen dollars.”

“Matilda!”

“Perhaps, ma’am,” repeated Matilda, “it was just as well they wouldn’t take us.”

Mrs. De Peyster did not speak.

“And what’s worse,” Matilda faltered, as though the blame was hers, “the hotels won’t trust you unless you have baggage.  And we have no baggage, ma’am.”

“Matilda!” There was now real tragedy in Mrs. De Peyster’s voice.  “What are we going to do?”

They walked along the Park, whispering over their unforeseen and unforeseeable predicament.  It had many aspects, their situation; it was quickly clear to them that the most urgent aspect was the need of immediate refuge.  Other troubles and developments could be handled as they arose, should any such arise.  But a place to hide, to sleep, had to be secured within the hour.  Also they needed two or three days in which to think matters over calmly, and to apply to them clear reason.  And they had only the fifteen dollars in Matilda’s black bag.

“It seems to me, ma’am,” ventured Matilda, “that a rooming-house or a boarding-house would be cheapest.”

“A boarding-house!” exclaimed Mrs. De Peyster.  “But where?”

Matilda remembered and reached into her slit pocket.  “Yesterday I happened to pick up the card of a boarding-house in the library—­I’ve no idea how it came there.  I saved it because my sister Angelica, who lives in Syracuse, wrote me to look up a place where she might stay.”

They examined the address upon the card, and twenty minutes later, now close upon midnight, Matilda was pressing the bell of a house on the West Side.  Visible leadership Mrs. De Peyster had resigned to Matilda, for they were entering a remote and lowly world whose ways Mrs. De Peyster knew not.  In all her life she had never been inside a boarding-house.

The door opened slightly.  A voice, female, interrogated Matilda.  Then they were admitted into a small hall, lighted by an electric bulb in a lantern of stamped sheet-iron with vari-colored panes and portholes.  From this hall a stairway ascended, and from it was a view into a small rear parlor, where sat a clergyman.  The lady who had admitted them was the mistress; a Junoesque, superior, languid sort of personage, in a loose dressing-gown of pink silk with long train.  To her Matilda made known their desire.