"God help me!" she murmured, fervently, her heart standing still in the great shock of this announcement. And if she had left him, as she had once thought of doing, her baby might have been kept from her. "Then you cannot help me!" "I am afraid not," he said, not unkindly; "the law as regards the rights of mothers is a little one-sided--a little unjust, I allow, but till they are altered----" "Good-bye," said Margaret, seized now with a sort of terror, lest something should have happened to her infant during her absence--she felt so far from it, she must hurry back. "Good-bye, madam," said the old lawyer, seeing before him somebody not usual in his experience. "If your husband ever strikes you we might have a case." "And my baby!" "Good gracious--a baby! You have an infant? you look so very young," he said, in a tone of apology. "Ah, well, you see, we need not go into that question just now." She went downstairs utterly broken down. She had always clung to a belief that if things got very bad she would be able to go. She had had a sort of blind belief that the laws of her country--boasted of so often, and the outcome of so much intellect and ability--were there to fall back upon and to protect her. She stopped to take breath and gather herself together for a moment, and she was just moving away from the door when some one passed in a hansom,--in another moment he had pulled up short, jumped out, and dismissed the cabman. Then he was beside her, and in the moment of her deepest anguish Sir Albert Gerald stood beside her. She was utterly miserable, too much crushed to feel surprised. He saw that she was quite unfit to be spoken to, that she had sustained some great shock, and he tried to think rapidly what was best for her. "I wish to go back to my sister," she said at length in a low voice. "Will you take me there?" He called a cab and put her into it, and got in and told the man to drive to the station. What was the meaning of all this? She said her sister, not her husband. Had she left her husband? He was longing to know all, and yet he could not ask her anything. "You know you can depend upon my friendship," he said earnestly to her, and the kindness of his tone, the care he took of her, everything contrasted with the misery of her home, and she lay back in the railway carriage with great tears unconsciously rolling over her face. He saw her safe to her sister's door, and there he left her, anxious not to increase her difficulties, but determined to be at hand should she require help. "Here is my address," he said, as he gave it to her. "At any moment I am ready to serve you, and I trust and hope you will not refuse me this one thing left for me to do--let me be of some use to you." "Thank you," said Margaret, gratefully. "If I go for help to any one I will go to you." And as she left him her smile of perfect confidence went to his heart.