“That is right and sensible. Here are fifty pounds which may prove serviceable if you should ever marry,” and Mr. Black handed her a crisp new Bank of England note.
The girl crumpled it in her hand and flung it back to him, her eyes flashing.
“You have taken away my husband—my love—my good name!” she panted. “How dare you offer me money? I will not take it if I starve!”
Mr. Black coolly picked up the note and restored it to his pocket.
He was about to speak further when the door was burst violently open, and the landlady, flushed with excitement, came rushing in like an incarnate tornado. The rejection of the money by Lally had incensed her beyond all that had gone before.
“I keep a respectable house, I hope, Miss,” snapped the woman. “I’ve heard all that’s been said here, as is right I should, being a lone widow and a dependent upon the reputation of my lodging-’us for a living. And being as you an’t married, though a pretending of it, I can’t shelter you no longer. Out you go, without a minute’s warning. There’s your hat, and there’s your sack. Take ’em, and start!”
Lally obeyed the words literally. She caught up her out-door apparel, and with one wild, wailing cry, dashed out of the room, down the stairs and into the street.
Mr. Black and the landlady regarded each other in a mutual alarm.
“You have driven her to her death, Madam,” said Craven Black excitedly. “She has gone out to destroy herself, and you have murdered her.”
He put on his hat and left the house. The girl’s flying figure had already disappeared, and the villain’s conscience cried out to him that she would perish, and that it was he, and none other, who had killed her.