"You look so very wretched and miserable," said she, to Annie. "I can’t bear the idea of your going home to that dull room. And what nonsense it is not to have a fire because you can’t afford it! Come you down to the theatre; Mr. Melton will give you a stage-box all to yourself; then you’ll go home with me to-night, and stay with me." She would not do that. She went home to the cold dark room—she lit only one candle for economy’s sake—and she asked if there were any letters. There were none. She had only a few shillings left now. She abhorred the idea of getting into debt with her landlady; but that, or starvation, lay clearly before her. And as she sate and pondered over her future, she wondered whether her mother had ever been in the like straits—whether she, too, had ever been alone, with scarcely a friend in the world. She thought of the Count, too. "If the beggar would marry the king, and exchange her rags for silk attire," she said to herself, bitterly, "now would be the time." By the nine-o’clock post no letter came; but a few minutes after the postman had passed, the landlord came up to the door of her room. "A letter, please, miss—left by a boy." Hoping against hope, she opened it as soon as the man had left. Something tumbled out and fell on the floor. On the page before her she saw inscribed, in a large, coarse, masculine handwriting, these words— "_An old admirer begs the liberty to send the enclosed to Miss Brunel, with love and affection._" But in that assumed handwriting Nelly Featherstone’s _e_’s and _r_’s were plainly legible. The recipient of the letter picked up the folded paper that had fallen. It was a five-pound note. "Poor Nelly!" she said, with a sort of nervous smile; and then her head fell on her hands, which were on the table, and she burst into tears over the scrawled bit of paper. CHAPTER XXXVII. POSSESSION. Mr. Joseph Cayley., Junr., sate in his private room in the office of Cayley & Hubbard. He was an unusually tall man, with a thin, cold, hard face, black eyes, black hair, and an expression of extraordinary solemnity. He looked as if none of his ancestors had ever laughed. A shrewd and clear-headed man of business, he was remarkable at once for his upright conduct of professional affairs, and for the uncompromising frankness, with the extreme courtesy, of his personal demeanour. His friends used to wonder how such a man and John Hubbard ever pulled together; but they did, and their business was even better now than when old Mr. Cayley took John Hubbard into partnership. A card was handed to Mr. Cayley by one of the youths in the office. He glanced at the card, looked at it attentively, and then there came over his face a singular expression of concern, surprise, and almost fear. "Show her in," he said, sharply, to the lad.