The first foot passenger of whom he inquired appeared to have no time to waste in giving information.  Hurriedly directing him to cross to the other side of the road, to turn down the first street he came to on his right hand, and then to ask again, the stranger unceremoniously hastened on without waiting to be thanked.

Kirke followed his directions and took the turning on his right.  The street was short and narrow, and the houses on either side were of the poorer order.  He looked up as he passed the corner to see what the name of the place might be.  It was called “Aaron’s Buildings.”

Low down on the side of the “Buildings” along which he was walking, a little crowd of idlers was assembled round two cabs, both drawn up before the door of the same house.  Kirke advanced to the crowd, to ask his way of any civil stranger among them who might not be in a hurry this time.  On approaching the cabs, he found a woman disputing with the drivers; and heard enough to inform him that two vehicles had been sent for by mistake, where only one was wanted.

The house door was open; and when he turned that way next, he looked easily into the passage, over the heads of the people in front of him.

The sight that met his eyes should have been shielded in pity from the observation of the street.  He saw a slatternly girl, with a frightened face, standing by an old chair placed in the middle of the passage, and holding a woman on the chair, too weak and helpless to support herself—­a woman apparently in the last stage of illness, who was about to be removed, when the dispute outside was ended, in one of the cabs.  Her head was drooping when he first saw her, and an old shawl which covered it had fallen forward so as to hide the upper part of her face.

Before he could look away again, the girl in charge of her raised her head and restored the shawl to its place.  The action disclosed her face to view, for an instant only, before her head drooped once more on her bosom.  In that instant he saw the woman whose beauty was the haunting remembrance of his life—­whose image had been vivid in his mind not five minutes since.

The shock of the double recognition—­the recognition, at the same moment, of the face, and of the dreadful change in it—­struck him speechless and helpless.  The steady presence of mind in all emergencies which had become a habit of his life, failed him for the first time.  The poverty-stricken street, the squalid mob round the door, swam before his eyes.  He staggered back and caught at the iron railings of the house behind him.

“Where are they taking her to?” he heard a woman ask, close at his side.

“To the hospital, if they will have her,” was the reply.  “And to the work-house, if they won’t.”

That horrible answer roused him.  He pushed his way through the crowd and entered the house.

The misunderstanding on the pavement had been set right, and one of the cabs had driven off.