She never forgave herself, that the child had been exposed to rain on the evening she took him away. Arriving in London she at once sought this obscure locality, renting, indeed, the best rooms in the house, and sparing no expense for the comfort and convenience of her boy. By degrees, in addition to fears for his life, she had to face the anxiety of a waning purse, and the terrible consideration of what was to become of them both when her money was gone. The most skilful doctor in the neighbourhood was called in at a guinea a visit; very often he wouldn't take his guinea; very often there would have been none forthcoming, had he wanted it. For a time, they lived on Jin's wardrobe, her watch, her jewels, by degrees the sources of supply began to fail. Then she moved herself and her boy up-stairs. First, she had the whole second floor, then she gave up the other room, and, inhabiting one small apartment with her sick child, devoted to him her time, her energies, her whole existence, as she often thought, with sad, cold forebodings, in vain. She starved, she pinched, she denied herself every luxury, almost every necessary, of life; but she never regretted what she had done, and she never lost courage. "If Gustave gets well," she used to think, "I can work for him and me as I did before. If I can only struggle on till then, how happy I shall be. I shall have saved my boy. How could he but have been ruined under the care of that bad man? I shall have saved myself, for it is this poor patient angel who makes me good. And Frank, dear Frank! I shall have saved _you_!--you whom I loved better than myself! Ah! I have done well by you, and you will never know it. _Qu'est que ça fait?_ It is finished, and there's an end of it. If my darling dies, what signifies anything? I shall soon die too! They will surely let me keep him in the next world. I who have had so little of him in this!" Like the rest of us, she made for herself a future, all the brighter, no doubt, that the present seemed so cheerless and forlorn. If the boy could only get well before her money was spent, if there was only enough left to defray the journey, she would carry him off with her to sunny France, there to live the old life, amongst the old scenes in the old familiar way.