“My God!” bursts from the young man’s lips, but he says no more. The next moment he has pressed a couple of sovereigns into the poor lad’s hand, and is gone. He wanders on through the same street. He takes no note of the name of it. His thoughts are far too busy for that. He is approaching another street, less lonely and better lighted than the one he is in. There are more people about, and he sees several women loitering up and down near the corner. Instinctively he crosses the street so as to avoid them. Two of them are making off after two men that have just passed by, the third is left alone. She spies the young duke at once, and runs across the street to cut him off. He sees he cannot avoid her, and pulls himself together. In another moment she is by his side, with one hand on his arm. “Won’t you come home with me, dear?” she says softly. “Won’t you——” “Peace, woman!” he almost shouts, as he flings off her hand from his arm. She starts back with a low cry, and he sees a face, young still, with traces of great beauty, but careworn and haggard with suffering. His heart is filled with a great pity; he feels that such sights as these are unendurable to him. He feels that he cannot face them. “Poor thing, poor thing,” he says gently; “forgive me if I was rough to you. This is no place for you, my child. You look a mere child; are you not one?” “I am eighteen,” she stammers. “Eighteen, and so fallen!” he exclaims in a horrified tone. “Ah, child! get away out of this.” “And starve?” she ejaculates bitterly. “Easy for you to talk; you are not starving.” “Starving!” He utters that word with a peculiar intonation. It tells her what pity there is in his heart for her. “Oh, sir!” she exclaims, “I would not be here if I were not driven to it. I don’t want to be here. I hate it; I hate it! It is my hard, hard fate, that I am here.” “Have you no father, no mother to care for you?” he asks sadly. “No, sir, not to care for me,” she answers, with a sob. “Father’s in gaol. Mother walks the streets like me, to make her bread. She told me I’d better do so too, unless I wanted to starve. That’s how it is, sir.” He covers his face with one hand, and groans aloud. His thoughts have rushed back to the luxury he has but lately quitted; he compares it with the misery he has just witnessed. Once more his hand is in his pocket. “If I give you this, my child,” he says, drawing out a five-pound note, “will you promise me to go home at once, and leave these streets of infamy and wrong; and if I give you my card, and promise to place you in a way of earning an honest livelihood, will you call at my house to-morrow for a letter which I will leave to be given to you? Will you try and get your mother, too, to come with you?” She bursts into tears. “Ah, sir! may God in heaven bless you. Yes, yes, I will promise; indeed I will. Gladly, too gladly.”