‘I care little enough,’ rejoined Mrs. Damerel, with a curl of the lips.  ’It’s Horace I am thinking of.  These people will embitter him against me, so long as they have any ground to go upon.’

‘But haven’t you let him know of that letter?’

Mrs. Damerel seemed to fall into abstraction, answered with a vague ‘Yes,’ and after surveying the room, said softly: 

‘So you must live here alone for another two or three years?’

‘It isn’t compulsory:  it’s only a condition.’

Another vague ‘Yes.’  Then: 

‘I do so wish Horace would come back and make his home here.’

‘I’m afraid you have spoilt him for that,’ said Nancy, with relief in this piece of plain speaking.

Mrs. Damerel did not openly resent it.  She looked a mild surprise, and answered blandly: 

’Then I must undo the mischief.  You shall help me.  When he has got over this little trouble, he will see who are his true friends.  Let us work together for his good.’

Nancy was inclined, once more, to reproach herself, and listened with patience whilst her relative continued talking in grave kindly tones.  Lest she should spoil the effect of these impressive remarks, Mrs. Damerel then took leave.  In shaking hands, she bent upon the girl a gaze of affection, and, as she turned away, softly sighed.

Of what had passed in the recent interview with Beatrice French, Nancy said nothing to her faithful companion.  This burden of shame must be borne by herself alone.  It affected profoundly the courageous mood which had promised to make her life tolerable; henceforth, she all but abandoned the hope of gaining that end for which she had submitted to so deep a humiliation.  Through Beatrice, would not her secret, coloured shamefully, become known to Luckworth Crewe, and to others?  Already, perchance, a growing scandal attached to her name.  Fear had enabled her to endure dishonour in the eyes of one woman, but at any moment the disgrace might front her in an intolerable shape; then, regardless of the cost, she would proclaim her marriage, and have, in return for all she had suffered, nothing but the reproach of an attempted fraud.

To find employment, means of honourable support, was an urgent necessity.

She had written in reply to sundry advertisements, but without result.  She tried to draw up an advertisement on her own account, but found the difficulty insuperable.  What was there she could do?  Teach children, perhaps; but as a visiting governess, the only position of the kind which circumstances left open to her, she could hope for nothing more than the paltriest remuneration.  Be somebody’s ‘secretary’?  That sounded pleasant, but very ambitious:  a sense of incompetency chilled her.  In an office, in a shop, who would dream of giving her an engagement?

Walking about the streets of London in search of suggestions, she gained only an understanding of her insignificance.  In the battle of life every girl who could work a sewing-machine or make a matchbox was of more account than she.  If she entered a shop to make purchases, the young women at the counter seemed to smile superiority.  Of what avail her ‘education,’ her ‘culture’?  The roar of myriad industries made mocking laughter at such futile pretensions.  She shrank back into her suburban home.