Mr. Yale was shocked. "You have not got a divorce?" he said. "No. After he left me I fell ill, and there were expenses. We were very poor until last year, when Grissel made a good engagement. That is why we are here. Now that her name is known he will come back and find her out. She plays as Kittie Latouche, but the profession know who she is, and--and what can I do? Oh, Mr. Yale! tell me what I can do for her." Her anxiety unnerved him. Her terror of the future, not her own, but her child's, wrung his heart. He had a presentiment whither she was leading him; and he tried to escape, he tried to murmur some commonplace of encouragement. "You may yet recover," he urged. "At any rate, there will be time to talk of this again." "There will not be time," she entreated him. "I have scarcely three days to live, and then my child will be alone. Oh, Mr. Yale! help me. She is young and handsome, with no one to guide her. If her father return, he will be her worst enemy. There is some one, too--some gentleman--who has fallen in with her, and been here. He may be a friend--what you were to me--or not! Don't you understand me?" she cried piteously. "How can I leave her unless you--there is no one else whom I can ask--will protect her?" He started and looked round for relief, but found none. "I? It is impossible!" he cried. "Oh dear, dear! I am afraid that it is impossible, Mrs. Kent." "Not impossible! I do not ask you to give her a home or money! Only care. If you will be her guardian--her friend----" She was a woman dying in sore straits. He was a merciful man. In the end he promised to do what she wished. Then he hastened to escape her gratitude, unconscious, as he passed down the stairs, of the whispering and giggling, the slatternliness and dirt, which had been so dreadful to him on his entrance. He walked along Oxford Street in a reverie, "Poor thing!" falling from him at intervals, until he reached the corner of Tottenham Court Road, and his eye rested upon a hoarding--at the first idly, then with a purpose, finally with a sidelong glance. The advertisement which had caught his attention was a coarse engraving of half a dozen heads, arranged in a circle, with one in the centre. Under this last, which was larger and more staring, and less to be evaded than the others, appeared the words, "Miss Kittie Latouche." He went on with a shiver, crossing here and there to avoid the hoardings, but only to fall in with a string of sandwich-men bearing the same device. He plunged into the haven of Soho as if he were a political conspirator.