"No," said Bet, raising her voice a very little--"not to you. I haven't a word to say to you though you have stabbed me in the dark. I could fight you, but I won't; for you're of the cowardly sort that think nothing of lies, and creeping into a thing by the back door. You ain't worth fighting. I wouldn't have it said I touched your sort. Keep the beat that wasn't my father's to sell, nor yours to buy. Keep it; make what you can of it. Good-night." The sparkle had not left her eyes, and the flush of exercise had given place to the flush of burning rage on her cheeks. She felt that she could have done that dark, malicious, talking girl an injury--only she wasn't worth it; she would pour the full vials of her wrath on other heads. She walked away rapidly, not caring in the least where she wandered. At that moment it was nothing at all to her that she was ruined--that her means of livelihood had been snatched from her--that she had a bundle of unsold papers under her arm, and only twopence in her pocket,--that two little boys would be hungry to-morrow for the bread which she could not give them. All the pain of these things would come later to her; but just now she only felt her swelling, raging anger, and her burning thirst to revenge herself on the cruel man who called himself her father. As a matter of course, she wandered into the slums and low places of the town--she eschewed the lighted thoroughfares, and walked along the darker streets. Her beauty was so remarkable to-night, that even here she was observed and commented upon; and with an instinctive, almost unconscious movement--for her passion absorbed her so much that she did not see the gaze of the passers-by--she raised her mother's worn, many-colored plaid shawl over her head, and partly hid her flushed, dazzling face in its folds. Suddenly, in the midst of her rapid, headlong walk, she drew up short, pressing her hand to her heart, her lips parted, her eyes distended to their widest. She was listening to a sound, and that sound was saving her. The full, rich, delicious notes of a woman's voice were floating out through one of the dark courts to Bet's ears--the notes warbled like a bird's, they rose and fell like the clear cool sound of a fountain. Bet's great eyes grew soft--she knew the voice, and the music drew her as certainly as a troubled child will fly to its mother. She went straight into the court, and joined the group of listeners who were hanging on to Hester Wright's melodious utterances.