“You’re free to stop or go, as you please,” said Holdsworth, giving her some money. “Then I ain’t to be paid out arter all?” exclaimed the man, striking a match, and holding it flaming in one hand and his pipe in the other. “Not by me,” answered Holdsworth, opening the hall-door. He took Nelly’s hand and gave Dolly his arm. She drew a long quivering sob as she passed through the garden; and then, seeing some inquisitive faces staring over the wire-blinds in the opposite house, hung her head and stepped out quickly. Mrs. Parrot, hearing them come in, ran out of the kitchen, and stood looking from one to the other of them in mute astonishment. “Mrs. Conway will make a temporary home of your house, Mrs. Parrot,” said Holdsworth. “You will kindly prepare a bed-room for her and Miss Nelly, and place your drawing-room at her disposal.” Dolly had sunk into a chair. He poured out some wine and held it to her, but she waved it away, striving to suppress her sobs. “Oh, ma’am, pray don’t take on so,” cried Mrs. Parrot, going up to her. “Things’ll come right, ma’am. You’ll be heasy an’ comfortable here.” Holdsworth knelt on a chair beside her, holding the wine. Oh, it was hard that he could not take her to his heart and whisper the word that would change all her anguish into joy. But if ever the barrier that was raised between them had been felt, it was felt by him then. Her honour now, more than ever it had been, was become peculiarly his care. The sense of her being another’s, that his own claims were as naught in the presence of her belief that she was Conway’s wife, was never before so sharply felt. Her misery had given her in his eyes a sanctity that made his yearning love sacrilegious. Humility conquered emotion, and he crept away from her side, and stood looking at her from a distance, holding Nelly’s hand. Meanwhile, Mrs. Parrot’s fingers were busy with Dolly’s hat strings and the shawl over her shoulders, and she murmured incessantly all manner of kindly sentences, of which their extreme triteness as consolatory axioms was greatly qualified by her motherly manner. “There, my dear,” she exclaimed, laying the hat upon the table, “drink a little wine: you’ll be better presently. Life’s full o’ troubles, God knows! and there are husbands in this world as is enough to make a woman forget her sect and strike ’em. But a friend, ma’am, is as good as sunshine to a frost-bitten man, and I’m sure you’ve got a good and kind one in Mr. Hampden.” “It’s my husband’s desertion,” cried Dolly, “that I think of. I don’t mind the loss of my home. But to think of _his_ deserting me and my little one when he _could_ not know that I had a friend--when I married him for Nelly’s sake, to get her bread. Yes, Mrs. Parrot, to save her from starving. And to feel that I defied my conscience only to be brought so low--_so_ low!”