She determined, therefore, to find, if possible, some nice respectable person with whom Gertie could be placed for a while, and taught to make herself useful. Ruth would pay what she could out of her pocket-money, and she was sure her papa would help her, though Gertie was not a Patagonian nor a South Sea Islander, but only a poor little English outcast. ‘What do you intend to do with this white elephant of yours, Ruth?’ said her mother presently. Ruth looked up vacantly. ‘White elephant, mother? What white elephant?’ ‘This child.’ Mr. Adrian laughed. ‘Rather a baby white elephant, Ruth, isn’t she?’ he said. ‘And she comes without her trunk.’ ‘John, don’t make foolish remarks. It’s no laughing matter,’ exclaimed the mistress of the house. ‘I’m not going to have this turned into a Reformatory or a Home for Lost Dogs for anybody. It isn’t respectable.’ ‘I’m sure the child’s respectable enough, or Ruth wouldn’t have anything to do with her.’ ‘Well, she has more clothes on than your favourite people wear, I confess, and I dare say she won’t want to eat the housemaid or to worship the kitchen fire,’ exclaimed Mrs. Adrian; ‘but, according to the way I was brought up, she belongs to a class of people with which all conversation is best avoided. Her friends, I dare say, are burglars and murderers of the worst description.’ ‘But mother——’ began Ruth. ‘Don’t argue, my dear. It’s no use. I dare say Miss—Miss what’s her name—_Miss_ Heckett is a little angel of purity and virtue—a paragon reared in the Dials; but as your mother I respectfully decline to have her under my roof. You must send her away.’ ‘I will, mother,’ answered Ruth, a shade of annoyance in her tone. ‘I’ll find a home for the poor child to-day.’ ‘There are plenty of refuges and reformatories, I’m sure, where they’d be glad to take her. There are places advertised in the paper every day.’ ‘You shan’t be troubled with her long, mother.’ Ruth took up the paper as she spoke, and began to read the advertisement-sheet. She had a dim idea that she might find some place advertised which would afford her little _protégée_ a temporary asylum. Glancing listlessly over the advertisements, she suddenly gave, a little cry, and her face flushed crimson. ‘Whatever’s the matter now, Ruth?’ asked Mrs. Adrian, pouring tea into the slop-basin instead of her cup in her astonishment. ‘Nothing!’ stammered Ruth; ‘nothing at all!’ She endeavoured to hide her confusion, and kept her face behind the paper, reading one paragraph over and over again: ‘Lost, a pocket-book containing a cheque. Anyone bringing the same to Mr. Edward Marston, Eden Villa, Camden Road, will be handsomely rewarded.’ Could it be the same Edward Marston? Ruth firmly believed that it was. It seemed as though Providence had shaped events so that she might read the paper, and thus find at once a means of communication with the man she wished to save.