"You bad girl! Not content with your father having ruined my boy by stealing all his money, you are mean enough and wicked enough to deliberately determine to cut away his one remaining chance of rising in the world! You would ruin him ... you intend to cling to him as a limpet clings to a rock ... he won't be able to raise you, poor lad, but you will drag him down into the mire, which will close over his head!"
Well, she had given him up; goaded by those words, following his obvious shrinking from her, she had left him a message which, if he loved her still, would sting him to the quick, and, in any case, had sufficed to sever them for ever.
It was done now. She must not brood; that would do no good, it would only unfit her for her daily work. Perhaps in time the feelings which racked her heart when she thought of these things would grow blunt, the hand of Time would still the pain, and her Heavenly Father would send angels down to whisper to her words of peace and consolation.
CHAPTER IX.
ALICE SINCLAIR'S POT-BOILERS.
Yet gold is not all that doth golden seeme.
SPENSER.
"Good-morning! Some one has told me that you have a garret to let in this house." The speaker, a merry girl a little over twenty, stood in Mrs. Austin's doorway, smiling up at her, one hot day in summer.
"A garret, miss. Who for?" asked Mrs. Austin, smiling back at her visitor.
"Well, for me," answered the girl, quite gaily.
"For you, miss?" exclaimed Mrs. Austin, in surprise. "Why, you don't look like one who would sleep in a garret!"