CHAPTER IV.

ALONE IN LONDON.

THE cause of Hester's hurried journey to London, was a letter which she had received from Carl, telling her of the existence of Rose's child, who had lately broken a blood-vessel, and was lying in a dangerous condition in her dreary school-home. True to the large pity and tenderness of her nature, Hester at once resolved to go up to London without inflicting this additional pang upon Rose, and see for herself what could be done for the forlorn little creature. The train by which she travelled left Little Aston at midday, but did not reach London until the evening. She had provided herself with the address of a boarding-house kept by a former inhabitant of Little Aston, and had decided to go to it at once for the night. She had Carl's address also, but she could not go to him though her heart sank a little when she found herself alone at the entrance of the busy terminus, with a maze of streets stretching before her. It was Saturday evening, and her

unexpected appearance at that hour would embarrass him and disturb his thoughts, set upon the subjects of to-morrow's sermons. To save Carl the mere chance of feeling her presence a distraction, she was willing to encounter any difficulties herself. Besides, she was in the same place with him; and she had no idea of the extent of the overgrown city. He might be dwelling in any one of these houses which she was passing, and it might be that his eye would fall upon her, if he chanced to look out through his study-window.

This thought caused Hester to slacken her quick footsteps, and to tread the crowded pavements with more leisure,—the leisure of a half-born hope. From time to time she inquired the way, and found herself more and more entangled in the busy streets. To call a cab would have been simply impossible to the country girl. But as long as the light lasted her pleasant thought remained. Twilight would draw Carl to his window to catch the last rays of day. Carl loved the dusk. But then she looked round to see what twilight and dusk were in the streets of London. The lamps were already lit, but there was a thick dark

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D

ness gathering in the big streets, where their shadows flitted to and fro, which gave her a vague, oppressive perception of the vastness of the place, of the myriads of human souls closely surrounding her, of the great heart of anguish throbbing in the bosom of the city. Hester felt her own heart heaving with a troubled and mysterious sympathy. The tears smarted under her eyelids; and now that Carl's eye could not recognise her in the growing darkness, she drew her veil over her face and quickened her wearied footsteps.

She reached her destination safely, but wornout and foot-sore. It was a dingy house in one of those old inns which have now disappeared from Holborn. She entered under a deep archway, shut in at night by large doors and kept by a watchman. Solemn silence reigned inside, and the sky lay low and flat across the roofs of the buildings, which rose to four and five storeys. The watchman pointed out the house she wanted, and in a few minutes Hester was received and welcomed with something more than the usual hospitality of a lodging-house landlady. A guest from Little Aston, as she announced herself, in trembling accents, was

always doubly acceptable; and very soon she felt more at home than she could have believed

possible.

The school where Carl had told her Rose's little girl lived was in a street leading off from Oxford Street; and Carl's chapel lay beyond, near Hyde Park. Hester lay awake almost all night thinking over her plans, and listening to the solemn boom and hum of the great clock of St. Paul's sounding through the stillness, which seemed to her at last to have fallen over the turmoil of the city. She set out again early in the morning, with minute directions from her landlady. Her rigorous sense of the sanctity of the Sabbath, which was kept with puritanic preciseness by the church at Little Aston, prohibited her entering any conveyance which would have carried her part of the distance. It was, too, an early hour of Sunday morning, one of the quietest hours that ever falls upon those weary streets; and Hester felt a kind of enjoyment in her novel position—alone in London, and yet near to Carl.

She reached, after a long walk, the street and the house she sought. It was a dull, dirty dwelling, with the words, "Ladies' Seminary,"

up.

upon the wire blinds of the windows in the second floor. It looked a melancholy place to inclose a child's life; yet it was not more melancholy than the home where she had grown Her memory ran rapidly over the past, and her heart melted with tenderness towards the child, who had known the same loneliness and the same desertion from which she had suffered, with the dumb sufferings of childhood. She saw a servant moving about in the underground kitchen, and Hester bent down to the half-open window, and called to her softly. The girl looked out with the weary air of a person who had been sitting up all night, and came to the area steps.

"You have a child here," she said, "who is very ill. ill. Can you let me see her?"

"I don't know," said the girl, with the caution of a town servant. "Where do you

come from?"

"From the country," answered Hester; "a gentleman who comes to see her often, sent for His name is Bramwell."

me.

"All right!" said the girl; "he promised to send a nurse, or somebody."

She eyed Hester scrutinizingly, nodded her