an unusual rate; and a few made head upon her, and looked back surprised at her undiminished speed; but they fell off one by one; and when she neared her place of destination, she was alone. It was a family hotel in a quiet but handsome street near Hyde Park. As the brilliant light of the lamp which burnt before its door, guided her to the spot, the clock struck eleven. She had loitered for a few paces as though irresolute, and making up her mind to advance; but the sound determined her, and she stepped into the hall. The porter's seat was vacant. She looked round with an air of incertitude, and advanced towards the stairs. "Now, young woman!" said a smartly-dressed female, looking out from a door behind her," who do you want here?" "A lady who is stopping in this house," answered the girl. "A lady!" was the reply, accompanied with a scornful look. "What lady?" "Miss Maylie," said Nancy. see a simple message carried for a poor wretch like me?" This appeal produced an effect on a good-tempered-faced man-cook, who with some other of the servants was looking on, and who stepped forward to interfere. "Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?" said this person. "What's the good?" replied the man. "You don't suppose the young lady will see such as her; do you?" This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour, that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel. "Do what you like with me," said the girl, turning to the men again; "but do what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty's sake." The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that the man, who at first appeared, undertook its delivery. "What's it to be?" said the man, with one foot on the stairs. The young woman, who had, by this time, noted her appearance, replied only by a look of virtuous disdain; and summoned a man to answer her. To him, Nancy repeated her request. "What name am I to say?" asked to say, she will know whether to hear the waiter. "That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie alone," said Nancy; "and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has her business, or to have her turned "It's of no use saying any," replied out of doors as an impostor." returned, and said the young woman was to walk up stairs. "It's no good being proper in this world," said the first housemaid. "Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire," said the second. The third contented herself with wondering "what ladies was made of;" and the fourth took the first in a quartette of "Shameful!" with which the Dianas concluded. Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart: Nancy followed the man with trembling limbs, to a small antechamber, lighted by a lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her, and retired. CHAPTER XL. A STRANGE INTERVIEW, WHICH IS A SEQUEL TO THE LAST CHAPTER. THE girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome of the stews and dens of London, but there was something of the woman's original nature left in her still; and when she heard a light | step approaching the door opposite to that by which she had entered, and thought of the wide contrast which the small room would in another moment contain, she felt burdened with the sense of her own deep shame and shrunk as though she could scarcely bear the presence of her with whom she had sought this interview. and gone away, as many would have done, you'd have been sorry for it one day, and not without reason, either." "I am very sorry if any one has behaved harshly to you,” replied Rose. "Do not think of that. Tell me why you wished to see me. I am the person you inquired for." The kind tone of this answer, the sweet voice, the gentle manner, the absence of any accent of haughtiness or displeasure, took the girl completely by surprise, and she burst into tears. Oh, lady, lady!" she said, clasping her hands passionately before her face, "if there was more like you, there would be fewer like me, there would-there would!" 66 "Sit down," said Rose earnestly; 'you distress me. If you are in poverty or affliction I shall be truly glad to relieve you if I can,-I shall indeed. Sit down." But struggling with these better feelings was pride, the vice of the lowest and most debased creatures no less than of the high and self-assured. The miserable companion of thieves" and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,-even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child. She raised her eyes sufficiently to observe that the figure which presented itself was that of a slight and beautiful girl; and then, bending them on the ground, tossed her head with affected carelessness as she said: "It's a hard matter to get to see you, lady. If I had taken offence, No. 155. P "Let me stand, lady," said the girl, still weeping, "and do not speak to me so kindly till you know me better. It is growing late. Is-is-that door shut?" 66 "Yes," said Rose, recoiling a few steps, as if to be nearer assistance in case she should require it. "Why?" "Because," said the girl, "I am about to put my life, and the lives of others in your hands. I am the giri that dragged little Oliver back to old Fagin's, the Jew's, on the night he went out from the house in Pentonville." "You!" said Rose Maylie. am the infamous creature you have put into your house on the night of heard of, that lives among the thieves, the robbery, I-suspecting this man and that never from the first moment-listened to a conversation held I can recollect my eyes and senses between him and Fagin in the dark. opening on London streets have I found out, from what I heard, that known any better life, or kinder Monks-the man I asked you about, words than they have given me, so you know-" help me God! Do not mind shrinking openly from me, lady. I am younger than you would think, to look at me, but I am well used to it. The poorest women fall back, as I make my way along the crowded pavement." "What dreadful things are these!" said Rose, involuntarily falling from her strange companion. "Thank Heaven upon your knees, dear lady," cried the girl, "that you had friends to care for and keep you in your childhood, and that you were never in the midst of cold and hunger, and riot and drunkenness, and-and something worse than all as I have been from my cradle; may use the word, for the alley and the gutter were mine, as they will be my deathbed." I "Yes," said Rose, "I understand." "That Monks," pursued the girl, "had seen him accidentally with two of our boys on the day we first lost him, and had known him directly to be the same child that he was watching for, though I couldn't make out why. A bargain was struck with Fagin, that if Oliver was got back he should have a certain sum; and he was to have more for making him a thief, which this Monks wanted for some purpose of his own." "For what purpose?" asked Rose. "He caught sight of my shadow on the wall as I listened, in the hope of finding out," said the girl; "and there are not many people besides me that could have got out of their way in time to escape discovery. But I did; and I saw him no more till last night." The "And what occurred then?" "I'll tell you, lady. Last night he came again. Again they went up stairs, and I, wrapping myself up so that my shadow should not betray me, again listened at the door. first words I heard Monks say were these: 'So the only proofs of the boy's identity lie at the bottom of the river, and the old hag that received them from the mother is rotting in her coffin.' They laughed, and talked of his success in doing this; and Monks, talking on about the boy, and getting very wild, said, that though he had got the young devil's money safely now, he'd rather have had it the other way; for, what a game it would have been to have brought down the boast of the father's will, by driving him through every jail in town, and then hawling him up for some capital felony which Fagin could easily manage, after having made a good profit of him besides." "What is all this!" said Rose. "The truth, lady, though it comes from my lips," replied the girl. "Then, he said, with oaths common enough in my ears, but strange to yours, that if he could gratify his hatred by taking the boy's life without bringing his own neck in danger, he would; but, as he couldn't, he'd be upon the watch to meet him at every turn in life; and if he took advantage of his birth and history, he might harm him yet. In short Fagin,' he says, 'Jew as you are, you never laid such snares as I'll contrive for my young brother, Oliver.'" "His brother!" exclaimed Rose. "Those were his words," said Nancy, glancing uneasily round, as she had scarcely ceased to do, since she began to speak, for a vision of Sikes haunted her perpetually. "And more. When he spoke of you and the other lady, and said it seemed contrived by Heaven, or the devil, against him, that Oliver should come into your hands, he laughed, and said there was some comfort in that too, for how many thousands and hundreds of thousands of pounds would you not give, if you had them, to know who your two-legged spaniel was." "You do not mean," said Rose, turning very pale, " to tell me that this was said in earnest ?" "To what use can I turn this communication without you? Back! Why do you wish to return to companions you paint in such terrible colours? If you repeat this information to a gentleman whom I can summon in an instant from the next room, you can be consigned to some place of safety without half an hour's delay." "I wish to go back," said the girl. "I must go back, because-how can I tell such things to an innocent lady like you?-because among the men I have told you of, there is one: the most desperate among them all: that I can't leave; no, not even to be saved from the life I am leading now." 66 "Your having interfered in this dear boy's behalf before," said Rose; your coming here, at so great a risk, to tell me what you have heard; your manner, which convinces me of the truth of what you say; your evident contrition, and sense of shame; all lead me to believe that you might be yet reclaimed. Oh!" said the earnest girl, folding her hands as the tears coursed down her face, "do not turn a deaf ear to the entreaties of one of your own sex; the first-the first, I do believe, who ever appealed to you in the voice of pity and compassion. Do hear my words, and let me save you yet, for better things." "Lady," cried the girl, sinking on her knees, "dear, sweet, angel lady, you are the first that ever blessed me with such words as these, and if I had heard them years ago, they might have turned me from a life of sin and sorrow; but it is too late-it is too late!" "It is never too late," said Rose, "for penitence and atonement." "It is," cried the girl, writhing in the agony of her mind; "I cannot leave him now! I could not be his death." "Why should you be?" asked Rose. "Nothing could save him," cried |