“I am sorry to insist, Miss Semaphore, but go you must. I will tell Jane she is to help you to pack. Even if I were willing to keep you, Captain Wilcox is not, and in such matters he is terribly severe. I really cannot gainsay him. He says he will not have you under this roof for forty-eight hours longer, and would sooner forfeit payment for your week’s board now due than let you stay.”
Prudence got up and groped her way blindly to the door.
“Very well,” she said, turning on the threshold. “Send Jane to me at once. I will leave before dinner.”
With the assistance of Jane, Miss Prudence put her belongings together, dressed, and desired the maid to call a cab. No one came to the door to see her off; but, glancing at the windows, she saw Mrs. Wilcox peeping out from her sanctum, and Mrs. Dumaresq and the medical woman from the window of their respective apartments.
With a heart full of bitterness, Prudence turned away, and bade the man drive on. Up one street and down another they went, the unhappy lady taking no note of where she was going, until she was roused from her brown study by the cabman, who drew up, descended from his box, and thrust his head in the window to ask where she wanted to go.
“I don’t know, cabman,” said Prudence helplessly. “I am looking for apartments. Do you know of any that are nice and respectable?”
“Why, yessem, I do,” said the man, “which my wife’s own sister, she keeps ’em in Victoria Crescent, an’ clean an’ respectable they are, that I’ll hanswer for; an’ she cooks splendid.”
“Then drive there, please,” said Prudence apathetically, and fell back into doleful musings, until the cab stopped at the address.
Mrs. Perkins, the cabman’s sister-in-law, married to an ex-butler, was a kindly, cheerful body, who willingly accepted a week’s rent in advance in lieu of references. In her sage-green parlour Prudence sat down with a feeling of rest and privacy, to which she had long been a stranger, and braced herself as best she might for the ordeal before her.
“My poor darling Gussie,” the goodhearted creature murmured over and over again. “What you must suffer! My dear sister, what must you think of me for sending you to that dreadful woman? But I did it for the best, I did it for the best.”