A sleepy night watchman took them up in the elevator. He was not even interested. Mrs. Wrandall did not speak, but leaned rather heavily on the arm of her companion. The door had no sooner closed behind them when the girl collapsed. She sank to the floor in a heap.
"Get up!" commanded her hostess sharply. This was not the time for soft, persuasive words. "Get up at once. You are young and strong. You must show the stuff you are made of now if you ever mean to show it. I cannot help you if you quail."
The girl looked up piteously, and then struggled to her feet. She stood before her protectress, weaving like a frail reed in the wind, pallid to the lips.
"I beg your pardon," she murmured. "I will not give way like that again. I dare say I'm faint. I have had no food, no rest—but never mind that now. Tell me what I am to do. I will try to obey."
"First of all, get out of those muddy, frozen things you have on."
Mrs. Wrandall herself moved stiffly and with unsteady limbs as she began to remove her own outer garments. The girl mechanically followed her example. She was a pitiable object in the strong light of the electrolier. Muddy from head to foot, water-stained and bedraggled, her face streaked with dirt, she was the most unattractive creature one could well imagine.
These women, so strangely thrown together by Fate, maintained an unbroken silence during the long, fumbling process of partial disrobing. They scarcely looked at one another, and yet they were acutely conscious of the interest each felt in the other. The grateful warmth of the room, the abrupt transition from gloom and cheerlessness to comfortable obscurity, had a more pronounced effect on the stranger than on her hostess.
"It is good to feel warm once more," she said, an odd timidness in her manner. "You are very good to me."
They were in Mrs. Wrandall's bed-chamber, just off the little sitting-room. Three or four trunks stood against the walls.
"I dismissed my maid on landing. She robbed me," said Mrs. Wrandall, voicing the relief that was uppermost in her mind. She opened a closet door and took out a thick eider-down robe, which she tossed across a chair. "Now call up the office and say that you are speaking for me. Say to them that I must have something to eat, no matter what the hour may be. I will get out some clean underwear for you, and—Oh, yes; if they ask about me, say that I am cold and ill. That is sufficient. Here is the bath. Please be as quick about it as possible."