Totty found it difficult to say that word even to herself.  ’The fact of the matter is, I don’t think as I shall ever care proper for anybody.  I’ve a good mind not to marry at all, as I always said I wouldn’t.  I was right enough as long as I kept to that.  The girls ‘ll only make fun of me.’

Yes, but her promise?—­She began to feel gloomy.  Perhaps nightfall had something to do with it.  Should she make tea?  No, she didn’t care for it.  She would go out—­somewhere.

She walked from Newport Street to Lambeth Road, passed Bethlehem Hospital (Bedlam), and came to St. George’s Cathedral.  It is a long, vast, ugly building, unfinished, for it still lacks towers; in the dark it looked very cold and forbidding, but Totty had a sense that there was warmth within, warmth and shelter of a kind that she needed just now.

She entered, and, at the proper place, dropped to her knees and crossed herself.  Then she stood looking about.  Near her, hanging against a pillar, was a box with the superscription:  ’For the Souls in Purgatory.’  She always put a penny into this box, and did so now.

Then she walked softly to an image of the Virgin, at whose feet someone had laid hothouse flowers.  A poor woman was kneeling there, a woman in rags; her head was bent in prayer, her hands clasped against her breast.  Totty knelt beside her, bent her own head and clasped her hands.

Yes, it was good to be here.  All was very still; but few lights were burning.  When Totty needed a mother’s counsel, a mother’s love, she was wont to come here and whisper humble thoughts to the image which looked down so soothingly upon all who made appeal.  To Totty her religion was a purely private interest.  It would never, for instance, have occurred to her to demand that her husband should be a Catholic, not even that he should view her faith with sympathetic tolerance.  No word on this subject would ever pass her lips.  What was it to any one else if she had in secret a mother to whom she breathed her troubles and her difficulties?  Could any one grudge her that?  The consolation was too sacred to speak of.  Her thoughts did not rise to a Deity; she thought but seldom of the story which told her that Deity had taken man’s form.  The Madonna was enough, the mother whose gentle heart was full of sorrows and who had power to aid the sorrowful.

The poor ragged woman sighed deeply, rose and went forth with humble step—­went forth to who knows what miseries, what cruelties and despairs.  But in her sigh there had been consolation.’

Even so with Totty.  When at length she left the church, her way was by no means clear of all obstacles, but the trouble which had come upon her with unwonted force was much simplified.  It was plain to her that she could give herself to Ackroyd, and that to give him the two hundred and fifty pounds would be a very substantial pleasure.  Growing accustomed to the thought of her wealth, she derived from it a quiet pride, which made her walk homewards more staidly than usual.  Luke could never forget that she had been a great help to him.