“It was not a wedding-ring. It was a little common turquoise thing, the stones turned inwards to her palm to deceive.”
“Miss Halifax! Good God! You know who it was?”
“Yes, I know,” she answered, hardly above a whisper—“I am sure I know. The hat—yes, and the description. She was to have come to me again in her need, poor wretched importunate child, if all else failed—and it has failed.”
She was so patently agitated, that he turned away during the minute in which she fought to recover herself.
“Now,” she said, “let us talk it over, please. You have described, I haven’t a doubt, poor Cicely Fleming. She was one, if not of the submerged tenth, of those that buoy themselves on scraps of driftwood and float on for a little—a typist, trained in an office, and afterwards seeking to make herself an independence through a small private connection. I need not dwell upon her story. So many of them, lacking the essential fibre, go under. Passionate, wrong-headed, persistent only in her claim to more consideration than she deserved, she fell an easy prey to flattery. A little better luck—for her—and she might have become a good man’s vixen; as it was, a villain found and used her. He came in the guise of a client—she confessed it all to me—and when sin called for its wages, he left her alone to bear the penalty, and disappeared.
“You will understand, Mr Balm, will you not? The girl was only one of the many whose misery is my province. In her despair she advertised for a little loan of fifteen pounds to tide her over a trouble. I understood, of course, and had her here. That was a week ago, perhaps. She was ready with her poor story—was married, of course, in all but the name. She would not give me his. She still had hopes that his desertion was only temporary—easy of explanation; and she would not yield his name to scandal. He had promised her before he went that he would let her know where to follow him; and she had promised for her part to be loyal and silent. Only the weeks had gone on, and he had made no sign; and at length, driven to desperation—”
“Yes, yes—she advertised.”
“She could not work; her rent was in arrears; I made her—I hope you will justify me, Mr Balm; she so clung to me; so opened her poor little bursting heart, with all its load of passion and vanity—I made her an advance provisionally, with a promise of further help if she should need and apply to me again.”
“I justify you? I bless you and congratulate myself.”
The girl rose to her feet, greatly overcome.