In a few minutes they arrived at her lodging, and Fan got out and went in to get her bag. She did not owe anything for rent, having paid in advance, but she gave the woman a shilling.
“I knew I was right,” said the woman, who was now all smiles. “Bless you, miss, you ain't fit to make your own living like one of us. Well, I'm real pleased your friends has found you.”
Fan got into the cab again, and they proceeded in silence to Dawson Place. A small boy in buttons, who had only been engaged a day or two before, opened the door to them. They went up to the bedroom on the first floor.
“Sit down, Fan, and rest yourself,” said Miss Starbrow, closing and locking the door; then after moving about the room in an aimless way for a little while, she came and sat down near the girl. “Before you tell me this dreadful story, Fan,” she said, “I wish to ask you one thing more. One day last week when it was raining you came home from Kensington with a young man. Who was he—a friend of yours?”
“A friend of mine! oh no. I was hurrying back in the rain when he came up to me and held his umbrella over my head, and walked to the door with me. It was kind of him, I thought, because he was a stranger, and I had never seen him before.”
“It was a small thing, but you usually tell me everything, and you did not tell me this?”
“No, I was waiting to tell you that—and something else, and didn't tell you because you seemed angry with me, and I was afraid to speak to you.”
“What was the something else you were going to tell me?”
Fan related the scene she had witnessed in the drawing-room. It had seemed a great thing then, and had disturbed her very much, but now, after all she had recently gone through, it seemed a very trivial matter.
To the other it did not appear so small a matter, to judge from her black looks. She got up and moved about the room again, and then once more sat down beside the girl.