“If you’ll allow me, ma’am, I think I might say some thing that would alter the case.  I believe, ma’am, you put a bank-note into the letter to the young woman yesterday?”

Mrs. Bellingham bowed acquiescence, and the maid went on—­

“Because, ma’am, when the little deformed man wrote that note (he’s Mr. Benson, ma’am), I have reason to believe neither he nor Mrs. Morgan knew of any provision being made for the young woman.  Me and the chambermaid found your letter and the bank-note lying quite promiscuous, like waste paper, on the floor of her room; for I believe she rushed out like mad after you left.”

“That, as you say, alters the case.  This letter, then, is principally a sort of delicate hint that some provision ought to have been made; which is true enough, only it has been attended to already.  What became of the money?”

“Law, ma’am! do you ask?  Of course, as soon as I saw it, I picked it up and took it to Mrs. Morgan, in trust for the young person.”

“Oh, that’s right.  What friends has she?  Did you ever hear from Mason?—­perhaps they ought to know where she is.”

“Mrs. Mason did tell me, ma’am, she was an orphan; with a guardian who was noways akin, and who washed his hands of her when she ran off.  But Mrs. Mason was sadly put out, and went into hysterics, for fear you would think she had not seen after her enough, and that she might lose your custom; she said it was no fault of hers, for the girl was always a forward creature, boasting of her beauty, and saying how pretty she was, and striving to get where her good looks could be seen and admired,—­one night in particular, ma’am, at a county ball; and how Mrs. Mason had found out she used to meet Mr. Bellingham at an old woman’s house, who was a regular old witch, ma’am, and lives in the lowest part of the town, where all the bad characters haunt.”

“There! that’s enough,” said Mrs. Bellingham sharply, for the maid’s chattering had outrun her tact; and in her anxiety to vindicate the character of her friend Mrs. Mason by blackening that of Ruth, she had forgotten that she a little implicated her mistress’s son, whom his proud mother did not like to imagine as ever passing through a low and degraded part of the town.

“If she has no friends, and is the creature you describe (which is confirmed by my own observation), the best place for her is, as I said before, the Penitentiary.  Her fifty pounds will keep her a week or so, if she is really unable to travel, and pay for her journey; and if on her return to Fordham she will let me know, I will undertake to obtain her admission immediately.”

“I’m sure it’s well for her she has to do with a lady who will take any interest in her, after what has happened.”

Mrs. Bellingham called for her writing-desk, and wrote a few hasty lines to be sent by the post-boy, who was on the point of starting—­