"Here," she said, putting some gold coins in his hand, "is something to make up for my troubling you. But I was real anxious to know if everything was right with the gal." Wilfer--debauched and demoralised by drink--was disposed to look at the worst side of things; and from this point of view thought she meant the reverse of what she said. "Would you be very much cut up," he said slyly, "if she wasn't able to trouble you any more or answer awkward questions, miss?" She turned on him with a fierceness that made him recoil. "If anything happens to that gal," she shouted, "I'll turn the police on you. For, mind my words--I mean them--I shouldn't have cared yesterday very much if I had learnt she was dead, but now I want her. Do you hear? I want her, and you take care she's alive and ready when I come for her." Then, without vouchsafing any further information, she flounced away, leaving Mr. Wilfer staring blankly after her, and wishing for once that he had stayed his hand, instead of driving the girl into the miseries and dangers of the streets. Little did Wilfer or Miss Lester imagine that Jessica had found safety and refuge in Adrien Leroy's chambers. CHAPTER VI Love is the universal epidemic, effectual in all climes and conditions; there is no inoculation that will secure exemption from its influence; only given a warm human heart, and there is the natural susceptibility. So it is from high to low. The little blind god takes no count of difference in fortune or rank in life. Dynasties fall, thrones totter to the ground, crowns tumble to dust on kingly heads; but love rules and lives on, immortal, triumphant, unconquerable. Jessica had never heard of Romeo and Juliet, of Faust and Marguerite, or King Cophetua and the beggar maid. All she knew was that she loved, was conscious only that for a kind word from the lips of the man who had befriended her, for a glance from those dark eyes; she would gladly have given up all the other glories the world could have put before her. Poor Jessica, how sweet and yet how bitter had been the awakening in that gilded cabinet. How sweet to find herself there in reality, and not only in a dream; how bitter to know that she had no right there and that she must go! That splendid golden room, with, all the wonderful undreamt-of things, was not for her. She looked down at her wet, dirt-stained dress, at her worn, ragged shoes, at her cold, red hands, and shuddered. She had no right there. Should she take advantage of his goodness to remain and sully the beauty of his palace--for to her it seemed little less--by her unworthy presence? No, woman-child as she was, she shrank from the thought; then caught up her hat and arose, resolute. "He will think me ungrateful," she murmured with half-closed eyes. "He will think--no matter, he will forget me before half an hour. I will go back to Johann and chance the beating. This is no place for one like me."