The room was at length ready, and she went up with little Mary, who had again fallen to sleep.  It was small, meagerly furnished, and offensive from want of cleanliness.  In turning down the bed clothes, she found the sheets soiled and rumpled, showing that the linen had not been changed since being used by previous lodgers.  The first thing that Mrs. Lane did, after laying her sleeping child upon the bed, was to sit down and weep bitterly.  The difficulties about to invest her, as they drew nearer and nearer, became more and more apparent; and her heart sank and trembled as she looked at the unexpected forms they were assuming.  But a single dollar remained in her purse; and she had an instinctive conviction that trouble with the landlady on account of money was before her.  Had she been provided with the means of independence, she would have instantly called a servant, and demanded a better room, and fresh linen for her bed; but, under the circumstances, she dared not do this.  She had a conviction that the Irishwoman was already aware of her poverty, and that any call for better accommodations would be met by insult.  It was too late to seek for other lodgings, even if she knew where to go, and were not burdened with a sleeping child.

Unhappy fugitive!  How new and unexpected were the difficulties that already surrounded her!  How dark was the future! dark as that old Egyptian darkness that could be felt.  As she sat and wept, the folly of which she was guilty in the step she had taken presented itself distinctly before her mind, and she wondered at her own blindness and want of forethought.  Already, in her very first step, she had got her feet tangled.  How she was to extricate them she could not see.

Wearied at last with grief and fear, her mind became exhausted with its own activity.  Throwing herself upon the bed beside her child, without removing her clothes, she was soon lost in sleep.  Daylight was stealing in, when the voice of little Mary awakened her.

“Where’s papa?” asked the child, and she looked with such a sad earnestness into her mother’s face, that the latter felt rebuked, and turned her eyes away from those of her child.  “Want to go home,” lisped the unhappy babe—­“see papa.”

“Yes, dear,” soothingly answered the mother.

Little Mary turned her eyes to the door with an expectant look, as if she believed her father, whom she loved, was about to enter, and listened for some moments.

“Papa! papa!” she called in anxious tones, and listened again; but there was no response.  Her little lip began to quiver, then it curled grievingly; and, falling over, she hid her face against her mother and began sobbing.

Tenderly did the mother take her weeping child to her bosom, and hold it there in a long embrace.  After it had grown calm she arose, and adjusting her rumpled garments, and those of Mary, sat down by the windows to await the events that were to follow.  In about half an hour a bell was rung in the passage below, and soon after a girl came to her room to say that breakfast was ready.