“How much money have we left, Marion?”
“Nine dollars and seventy-five cents, but don’t worry, sister! We’ll obtain more from somewhere, I’m sure. We cannot certainly be going to starve in a great big city, full, as it is, of wealth and happiness!”
Dollie Marlowe sighed disconsolately. She was not so hopeful as her sister Marion.
The two girls were seated in a top floor room of a cheap boarding-house, where they had gone only a day or two after Dollie’s rescue from the clutches of Professor Dabroski, the hypnotist, who had abducted her from her home in the country.
Both girls were dressed in simple home-made frocks, the same that they had worn when they first came to the city, but although their garments were coarse and absolutely destitute of style they could not disguise the natural beauty of the two maidens.
The girls were twins, but they did not look at all alike, except in the general characteristics of their features.
Dollie’s golden curls were bewitching as a fairy’s, and her blue eyes sparkled even through her tears, while Marion’s fair face was sweet and charming in spite of the anxieties to which she had been subjected. For Marion’s first visit to the city had been full of adventure. On her arrival she had been sent to the wrong address by Emile Vorse, a fiend in the attire of a gentleman, who had seen her at the station, and only rescued from the insults of another fiend by a Miss Ray, who was kept almost a prisoner in the apartments to which Vorse sent Marion.
Miss Ray had confided to her that she had been entrapped through a mock marriage and only remained quiet for the sake of her family, but Marion had induced her to run away, and the young woman was now safe in the bosom of her family.
After this experience came the rescue of Dollie from her abductor, and then, without funds or friends, the girls took up their brave struggle for existence in a city which shows but little mercy to the poor or the unfortunate.
For two weeks they had occupied this shabby room, which they obtained, with their board, for eight dollars per week, and during this time poor Marion had been very busy, for it was chiefly her information that secured the indictment against her sister’s abductor.