and, turning to the gaping group in the room, he added: “We were married last night, and she ran away from me because she found out I wasn’t as rich as she expected,[Pg 83] and I came this morning to take her home with me—and, by Heaven, I will, for I mean to tame the little shrew.”

[Pg 83]

It had suddenly occurred to him that it was a good thing for him that Mrs. Fielding was dead. It would be easier to cope with her daughter.

But the bereaved daughter was glaring at him with the rage of a tigress bereaved of her young, and still crying madly:

“Won’t some one bring a policeman and take him to prison? He has killed my mother.”

A big, stout Irishwoman, who was looking in at the door called out lustily:

“Arrah, my poor lamb, that will I bring a policeman this minute if sumbuddy will howld the spalpeen till I gits back,” and she stumped out into the hall on her coarse brogans, while George Lorraine, with his senses half stupefied by drink, gave way to a maudlin terror, and, dashing by the astonished group, made good his escape.

A motherly old woman led the half-crazed orphan from the scene, and soothed her tenderly, while others cared for the mortal remains of the dead woman.

Some one had brought in a passing physician,[Pg 84] and he had told them that Mrs. Fielding had died of heart failure.

[Pg 84]

Fair’s first request, as soon as she could think coherently, was for her dearest friend, Sadie Allen, to be sent for. She came at once, full of surprise and grief, and Fair threw herself into those sympathizing arms with an outburst of passionate grief.

“Oh, Sadie, I am too poor even to bury her!” she sobbed. “We spent the last penny buying those wretched clothes. Do you think that we could sell them? Yes, and the furniture, too? I had rather sleep upon the bare boards than that my mother should be buried in Potter’s field.”

“She shall not be buried there, Fair. Leave everything to me,” answered her friend consolingly; and she kept her word, although to accomplish it Fair’s wedding dress and hat, and also the furniture, had to be sold.

“But she will not need the furniture, for she can come and room with me, and as for clothes, I would have tried to save them if she had prized them; but 

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