She had only a few shillings left now. She abhorred the idea of getting into debt with her landlady; but that, or starvation, lay clearly before her. And as she sate and pondered over her future, she wondered whether her mother had ever been in the like straits—whether she, too, had ever been alone, with scarcely a friend in the world. She thought of the Count, too.
"If the beggar would marry the king, and exchange her rags for silk attire," she said to herself, bitterly, "now would be the time."
By the nine-o'clock post no letter came; but a few minutes after the postman had passed, the landlord came up to the door of her room.
"A letter, please, miss—left by a boy."
Hoping against hope, she opened it as soon as the man had left. Something tumbled out and fell on the floor. On the page before her she saw inscribed, in a large, coarse, masculine handwriting, these words—
"An old admirer begs the liberty to send the enclosed to Miss Brunel, with love and affection."
But in that assumed handwriting Nelly Featherstone's e's and r's were plainly legible. The recipient of the letter picked up the folded paper that had fallen. It was a five-pound note.
"Poor Nelly!" she said, with a sort of nervous smile; and then her head fell on her hands, which were on the table, and she burst into tears over the scrawled bit of paper.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
POSSESSION.