She imagined herself wedded to him; at liberty to stand before him and confess all the thoughts which now consumed her in the silence of vain longing.  “Why did I break free from the fetters of a shameful life?  Because I loved, and loved you.  What gave me the strength to pass from idle luxury, poisoning the energies of the soul, to that life of lonely toil and misery?  My love, and my love for you.  I kept apart from you then; I would not even let you know what I was enduring; only because you had spoken a hasty, thoughtless word to me, which showed me with terrible distinctness the meaning of all I had escaped, and filled me with a determination to prove to myself that I had not lost all my better nature, that there was still enough of purity in my being to save me finally.  What was it that afflicted me with agony beyond all words when I was made the victim of a cruel and base accusation?  Not the fear of its consequences; only the dread lest you should believe me guilty, and no longer deem me worthy of a thought.  It is no arrogance to say that I am become a pure woman; not my own merits, but love of you has made me so.  I love you as a woman loves only once; if you asked me to give up my life to prove it, I am capable of doing no less a thing than that.  Flesh and spirit I lay before you—­all yours; do you still think the offering unworthy?”

And yet she knew that she could never thus speak to him; her humility was too great.  At moments she might feel this glow of conscious virtue, but for the most part the weight of all the past was so heavy upon her.

Fortunately, her time did not long remain unoccupied.  As her grandfather’s heiress she found herself owner of the East-end property, and, as soon as it was assured that she would incur no danger, she went over the houses in the company of the builder whom Abraham had chosen to carry out his proposed restorations.  The improvements were proceeded with at once, greatly to the astonishment of the tenants, to whom such changes inevitably suggested increase of rent.  These fears Ida did her best to dispel.  Dressed in the simplest possible way, and with that kind, quiet manner which was natural to her, she went about from room to room, and did her best to become intimately acquainted with the woman-kind of the Lane and the Court.  It was not an easy end to compass.  She was received at first with extreme suspicion; her appearance aroused that distrust which with the uneducated attaches to everything novel.  In many instances she found it difficult to get it believed’ that she was really the “landlord.”  But when this idea had been gradually mastered, and when, moreover, it was discovered that she brought no tracts, spoke not at all of religious matters, was not impertinently curious, and showed indeed that she knew a good deal of what she talked about, something like respect for her began to spring up here and there, and she was spoken of as “the right sort.”