He obeys her mechanically. When the dismal tallow light reveals the bare hideousness of the room she leans her arms on the table and looks full into his stern face with unabashed, and, to him, crime-hardened glance.
"How well you wear, Thomas Armstrong! How strong and big and full of life you are! It gives me breath to look at you."
"You are ill?" he says abruptly.
"Ill! Well, I am not exactly in what you call robust health; I haven't been for many a day. I wish I could get into the consumptive hospital. A woman on the landing below me, a French-polisher, said she'd try to get me in when she came back from a job in the country; she has been a long time away."
"You are alone?"
"Yes; he left me three weeks ago to attend some Newmarket meeting, and he has not returned since. I suspect he doesn't mean to do so either, though he has left an old portmanteau in my charge. I—I am not what you call a cheerful or fascinating companion for any man—am I? You—you would not like to escort me down Regent Street, would you, Mr. Armstrong?"
He answers not a word.
"Do you know, I passed my brother Robert Lefroy in the Strand a week ago. When I uttered his name he sprung off the footpath to avoid my touch, and jumped into a passing hansom, as if to get out of the very air I was breathing; he looked almost ill when he saw me. You bore the shock better; but then you are made of stronger stuff than he, and, besides, you sprung from the depths into which I have sunk. You are acclimatized. Won't you sit down? I haven't a second chair; but the corner of the table near the door will bear your weight."
"Have you no one to help you? Are you destitute?" he asks, bringing out his words with a jerk.
"He left me seven-and-sixpence when he went away, saying he would be back in a few days. I have had nothing since; and yet he knew I was dying and friendless. I wrote to my sister Lady Saunderson when I first landed, and asked her, for the love of Heaven, for the sake of the same mother who bore us, to give me help, to let me die somewhere out of this hole of pestilence and crime; but she never answered my letter." She stops, then says, with a peevish querulous gesture, "Thomas Armstrong, why don't you say something to me, instead of staring as if I were a ghost, a ghoul?"