“Contrasts,” muttered the man to himself. “Rowton Heights last night, Nance in her silver-grey dress, the old ancestral home—all the ‘noblesse oblige’ of long descent surrounding me and tingling in my veins! To-night, the slums, and I no stranger in them!”
He muttered an oath which scarcely reached his lips, but filled his heart with intolerable bitterness. He left the glaring street with all its light and noise, and turned abruptly down a dark passage. The next moment he had knocked with his knuckles in a peculiar way on a certain door. The door was cautiously opened by a girl in a dirty dress with a towzled fringe reaching to her eyebrows.
“Who is there?” she asked.
“Silver,” was the reply.
“Oh! Silver, thank Heaven you have come,” she answered.
“Hush! don’t speak so loud,” said Rowton in a low voice. “How are you, Sophy—pain in the back any better?”
“No, sir, I suffers awful still,” answered the poor slavey. “Glad you are back, sir; don’t think I can stay much longer.”
“Oh! yes, you can—here is a sovereign to put in your pocket.”
“Bless you, sir, bless you, Silver,” the girl murmured as she stifled back a sob. She slipped the coin into her mouth for greater safety, and abruptly turned to walk upstairs.