a sigh of relief, she allowed the physician to place[Pg 27] her in the elegant automobile by the side of her rescuer, and then she was alone with him, for the door closed, and a kind, musical voice was saying:

[Pg 27]

“Now, tell the driver your address, please, and he will take you home at once.”

Very timidly she named a cheap lodging house in a distant, humble street, and as she saw his start of surprise she instantly added, with a touch of bitterness:

“If it is too far out of your way, I can get out and walk, sir, as I am used to walking.”

She had quickly comprehended that he was rich and proud, and fancied that he might feel himself above her, hence her resentful speech, to which he answered, with a slight smile at her petulance:

“You may be used to walking usually, but I do not think you could do so at present, after the shock and hurt you have received.”

“Oh, yes, I’m almost certain I could,” she began to say resentfully again, and, observing a keen, almost quizzical, glance in the stranger’s blue eyes, she added desperately:

“I have to walk always, whether sick or well,[Pg 28] for I have no automobile to ride in. I’m only a working girl—a sewing girl.”

[Pg 28]

Something had seemed to compel her to the humiliating confession, for to her proud young nature, so badly tutored by her mother, it did seem humiliating to own it to this aristocratic-looking man, whose liveried chauffeur had turned up his nose—she distinctly observed it—when she had so timidly told him her address.

But the car was rattling along smartly now over the stony streets, and she was sitting there on the cushions, going home in magnificent style, and with something stirring at her heart that had never thrilled it before—something new and sweet and strange that had seemed to start into life at the first glance of those splendid dark-blue eyes that now turned on her with something like pitying wonder, as their owner said gravely:

“You look very young to have to work for your living. Are you an orphan?”

“My father is dead. My mother is living, but she is sick, and I am her only child,” Fair said, then stopped abruptly.

He had winced and shut his eyes as 

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