By a mercy Mrs. Chater was not hurt. By a special intervention of Providence she had escaped a fearful death. Whether she would ever recover from the shock was another matter. Whether the shock would prove to be that sudden strain on her heart which she had been warned would end fatally, might at any moment be proved. Much anybody, except her darling children, would care if she were brought home dead in this very cab. Never had she known a heart to act as hers was acting now--thumping as if it would burst, first quickly then slowly. Perhaps Miss Humfray would feel it, and give her opinion. Where the girl now laid her small hand five infant Chaters had been nourished; the massive bosom was advertisement that they had done well. Beneath the mingled gusts of hysteria and of wrath it violently contracted and dilated; but the heart, terrificly though Mrs. Chater said it throbbed, lay too deep to be discerned. The agitated woman panted, “Can it go on like that?” “I'm afraid I hardly--” Miss Humfray shifted her hand. “_Stupid!_ Take off your glove!” The white kid clung to the warm flesh. Nervous and clumsy the girl struggled with it. “Miss _Humfray!_ How slow you are! _Pull_ it!” Mrs. Chater grabbed the turned-back wrist. A crack answered the jerk, and the glove split away in her hand. “_There!_ Not my fault. Next time, perhaps, you will buy gloves sufficiently large. Oh, my poor heart! Now, feel. _Press!_” The girl bit her lip. Humiliation lumped in her throat. She pressed, as bid, into that heaving blouse; said she could feel it. It was not very violent, she thought. Perhaps if Mrs. Chater lay back and closed her eyes-- “_I_ was not able to jump out, you see,” said Mrs. Chater, sinking. “Oh, you don't think I _jumped_ out--and left you? I _wouldn't_. Besides, it is the most dangerous thing to do. That would have prevented me in any case. I was thrown. I thought I was going to be killed.” “You were with a young man.” “He caught me.” The words came faintly. Nearly the girl was crying. That lump in her throat seemed to be squeezing tears from her eyes--silly tears. She did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy, yet could not but reflect what disregard for her the utter absence of inquiry showed. Bitter thoughts yet more dangerously squeezed the tears. She was a paid _thing_, that was all--not even a servant. Mrs. Chater was on kindly terms with her servants--had experienced the servant problem and craftily evaded it by the familiarity that was too useful to produce contempt--knew her maids' young men, entered into their quarrels with their young men, read their young men's letters. II. Gazing through the cab window, pressed into her corner, the girl felt herself friendless, outcast, alone. Again she told herself that she did not want Mrs. Chater's sympathy; yet it was the studied withholding of it--studied or callous because so natural, the merest conventionalism, to have asked, “Were you hurt?”--that made her acutely feel her position.