“Of course I don’t believe it! How can you ask me? Sit down. How good of you to come here. Tell me—are you terribly frightened?”
“No, I don’t think I am now. Why should I be? If I am so unlucky as to have been tossed up in the news hat of the ‘Eye,’ I cannot help it; and I suppose this is only the beginning. If I have to go to jail I have to, and that is the end of it; but they cannot possibly convict me, for I am innocent.”
“Oh, you always were the bravest woman I ever knew. It is like you—Come.”
The door opened, and the landlady entered and closed it carefully behind her. She was a tall thin elderly woman with a refined face stamped with commercial unquiet. Her grey hair was piled high. Her voice was low, and well modulated. She looked at Patience out of faded blue eyes in which there was a faint sparkle of resentment.
“I see that you have a trunk on your cab, Mrs. Peele,” she said, “I am very sorry that I have no room.”
“I had no intention of asking you for a room,” said Patience, haughtily. “I merely came to call on Miss Merrien; and as I have only a few moments to spare, I should be obliged if you would leave us alone.”
The landlady retired in disorder, and Miss Merrien exhausted her vocabulary of invective.
“What is the use?” said Patience. “She is right. In the struggle for bread and butter it must be self first, last, and always. If it were known—as it would be—that I had been arrested from her house every other lodger would leave. Well, I must go roof-hunting.” She laughed suddenly. “If I do go to jail I suppose you’ll come to interview me. I hope so. Good-bye.”
Miss Merrien, although not a demonstrative girl, kissed her affectionately. “The ‘Day’ will defend you for all it’s worth—you know that. And I needn’t say anything about myself.”
Patience told her cabman to drive to the Holland House, but when he stopped there she did not get out. Reflection had convinced her that no hotel in New York would take her in. She dared not give a false name lest her motive should be misconstrued. She put her head out of the window and gave the man Rosita’s address.