She cried silently for some time, and then she told me that they had lived together for years, getting a living by making ladies’ aprons, etc., for the shops; that for a long time past her sister had been failing, and that for the past three months she had lain on that bed. She told me also how her own eyes had been gradually weakening, and her own earnings had fallen off, and, to make things worse, for the past month she had been half mad with neuralgia. So they had got behind with their rent, and the landlady was constantly abusing them and threatening to turn them out. They were the daughters of a once thriving tradesman. The dying sister had married a professor of languages, and with her husband had lived for a long time in Germany and France. Her husband had lived expensively and died suddenly, leaving his wife unprovided for. She herself had kept house for her father--she scarcely remembered her mother--and after the death of her father, who left her some little money, her sister joined her, and they tried to eke it out by doing needlework. But their earnings were small, and by degrees their bit of money went, and now sickness and death had come, and they were penniless. I made no more inquiries. I could see for myself that poverty and death were in that murky room. So I satisfied the landlady, sent in some coals, nourishment, and a better lamp. On Christmas Day, by the aid of this lamp, she saw her sister die, and a few days afterwards she stood by the grave of that sister, who had been given a common--very common--interment by the parish. Several years they had lived in that underground room; a street grating was over their only window, and over that grating children played, and hundreds of people tramped daily knowing nothing of the tragedy going on underneath. But I helped her out of the cellar to a first-floor back, where there was a good window. I obtained a pair of spectacles to aid her weakened eyes, and she said she could keep herself, for old women think they can do wonders. I heard no more of her for years, but one day there came a small package to me. There was no letter, but the package contained a silver German coin, nicely mounted and made into a brooch; it was wrapped in a piece of paper, on which was written: ‘In memory. Forlorn hope.’ Either the workhouse or the grave--most probably the latter--has swallowed her.