"What's he a-doing to ye, my dear, eh?" she said, jeeringly. "Sarve ye right!" she added, and laughed again. She was a draggled, battered outcast—a human ruin, such as night, the pander, flings away.
Mercy lifted her head. A dull, weary look was in her eyes.
"You know how I waited and waited," she said, "and you were so long in coming, so very long." She turned her eyes aside. "You did not want me; in your heart you did not want me," she said.
The wave of bitter memory drowned her voice. Not unmoved, he stood and looked at her, and saw the child-face wet with tears, and the night breeze of the city drift in her yellow hair.
"Where have you been since?" he said.
"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard. His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to them; and besides—besides—"
"Well?"
"She saw that I was—she saw what was going to—being a woman, she knew I was soon—"
"Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?"
"The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and they said—oh, they said I might lose my sight!"