As Mildred was about to enter the station-house she had looked back, hoping, for the first time in her life, that Roger Atwood was near.  The eager and reassuring wave of his hand satisfied her that he would know the place of her imprisonment, and that he would do for her all within his power.  Again he had appeared in the hour of misfortune and bitter humiliation.  But, inspite of her heart, she now did justice to his sturdy loyalty, and she was comforted and sustained by the thought that not quite all the world was against her.  She also knew that he would relieve her mother and Belle from unendurable anxiety on account of her absence, and that he would summon Mr. Wentworth to her aid.  His promise to prove her innocent had meant nothing to her more than that he would inform and rally all of her friends.  That he could know anything that would throw light on the evil mystery did not seem possible.  She was then too miserable and depressed to do much more than wait, in a sort of stunned torpor, for what might next occur.  Mechanically she answered such questions as were put to her in order that a record of the case might be made, and then was led to the cells below.  She shuddered as she saw the dimly lighted stairway, and it seemed to her morbid fancy that she was to be thrust into a subterranean dungeon.  Such, in a certain sense, it was; for in some of the older station-houses the cells are located in the basement.  At the end of the corridor, nearest the street, she saw several women, and, unkempt and disgusting as these station-house tramps appeared, the fact that some of her own sex were near was reassuring.  A prison was to her a place full of nameless horrors, for the romances she had read in brighter days gave to it the associations of medieval dungeons.  Of the prosaic character of a modern jail she knew nothing, and when she was placed within a bare cell, and the grated iron door was locked upon her, the horrible desolation of her position seemed as complete and tragic a fate as had ever overtaken the unfortunate in the cruel past.  She sat down upon the grimy wooden bench, which was the only provision made for rest or comfort, and the thought of spending a lonely night in such a place was overpowering.  Not that she could hope for sleep, even if there were downy pillows instead of this unredeemed couch of plank on which some beastly inebriate may have slept off his stupor the night before, but she felt weak and faint, and her overtaxed physical nature craved some support and rest.

Distress of mind, however, soon made her forget all this, as her faculties slowly rallied from the shock they had received, and she began to realize that she was charged with a crime of which it might be difficult—­perhaps impossible—­to prove her innocence.  At best, she feared she would always be so clouded with suspicion that all would refuse to employ her, and that her blighted life and undeserved shame, added to her father’s character, would drag the family down to the lowest depths.  The consequences to them all, and especially to Belle, seemed so threatening and terrible that she wrung her hands and moaned aloud.