Mrs. Trevanion laughed with a strange solemnity. She looked before her into the vacant air, as if looking in the face of fate. What could make her miserable now? Nothing--the worst that could be done had been done. She said, but to herself, not to Jane, “There is an advantage in it, it cannot be done over again.” Then she began to prepare for the arrival. “We shall have a great deal to do, and we must lose no time. Jane, you will go at once and provide some clothes for us. Whatever happens, we must have clothes, and we must have food, you know. The other things--life can go on without--” “Madam, for God’s sake, do not smile, it makes my blood run cold.” “Would you like me to cry, Jane? I might do that, too, but what the better should we be? If I were to cry all to-day and to-morrow, the moment would come when I should have to stop and smile again. And then,” she said, turning hastily upon her faithful follower, “I can’t cry--I can’t cry!” with a spasm of anguish going over her face. “Besides, we are just arriving,” she added, after a moment; “we must not call for remark. You and I, we are two poor women setting out upon the world--upon a forlorn hope. Yes, that is it--upon a forlorn hope. We don’t look like heroes, but that is what we are going to do, without any banners flying, or music, but a good heart, Jane--a good heart!” With these words, she stepped out upon the crowded pavement at the great London station. It was a very early hour in the morning, and there were few people except the travellers and the porters about. They had no luggage, which was a thing that confused Jane, and made her ashamed to the bottom of her heart. She answered the questions of the porter with a confused consciousness of something half disgraceful in their denuded condition, and gave her bag into his hands with a shrinking and trembling which made the poor soul, pallid with unaccustomed travelling, and out of her usual prim order, look like a furtive fugitive. She half thought the man looked at her as if she were a criminal escaping from justice. Jane was ashamed: she thought the people in the streets looked at the cab as it rattled out of the station with suspicion and surprise. She looked forward to the arrival at the hotel with a kind of horror. What would people think? Jane felt the real misery of the catastrophe more than any one except the chief sufferer: she looked forward to the new life about to begin with dismay; but nevertheless, at this miserable moment, to come to London without luggage gave her the deepest pang of all. CHAPTER XXXVIII.