but I think no friends. Let us not talk of this any more, though, Mr. Stanton. I have forgotten myself."

"Forgive me–I can't obey you," I protested. "Just one word. As you said, this is only our second meeting, and I have no right to ask a favour of you, yet I am going to do it. I beg of you, as I never begged anything before, that you will forget how short a time we have known each other, and that you will take me for a friend–a friend in the truest and best sense of that good, much-abused word. I swear to you that you would find me loyal."

69She looked up at me in the sweetest way, with eyes that glistened through a sheen of tears.

69

"I believe that I should find you so," she answered, falteringly. "And, oh, how I do need a friend–though you may think me disloyal to say that, when I have a home with those who–have meant to be kind to me." Her eyes had dropped, but now she raised them again and met mine earnestly. "Yes," she exclaimed–"yes, I will have you for a friend."

"Then won't you begin by making use of me at once?" I pleaded with an eagerness I could no longer disguise.

"I–am I not making use of you now? Ah, I know what you mean! You mean I am to tell you the things which I have let you see are troubling me? But much as I need help and advice, could I do that now, so soon? You must already think me a very strange girl–half mad perhaps. Well, I have had almost enough of late to drive me mad. Some time, in a few days maybe, when we know each other 70 a little better, I―But the man is stopping. We have come to the doctor's you spoke of, I suppose?"

70

I neither blessed the cabman nor the doctor at that moment. Still less did I do so afterwards, knowing that, if we had not been interrupted then, it might well have happened that the whole course of our two lives had been changed.

However, there was nothing to be done but ascertain if the eminent man was at home, and able to give his attention to a somewhat urgent case.

The poor girl, too, was evidently suffering, and in a highly nervous state, and it would have been cruel, now that the opportunity had presented itself, to keep her for a single instant from the restoratives doubtless at hand.

Dr. Byrnes was to be seen. I introduced Miss Cunningham to him, described the 

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