That Monday evening Nancy paid Miss Fewkes her bill and stared at the few pounds that remained. Of course, she could carry on for a little while by pawning, but had she any right to imperil by such methods Letizia’s well-being? Besides, now that the Kinos were going away, there was the problem of looking after Letizia during the day. At a pinch she could ask Mrs. Pottage to look after her for a week or two; but did not everything point to Brigham at this moment? Could she still have any pride after that account she had heard to-day of her father’s degradation? No, her duty was clear. She would make one more round of the agents, and then if she was still without an engagement on Thursday, she would take Letizia to her husband’s relations. CHAPTER XIII LEBANON HOUSE Of all the great stations in the world Euston alone preserves in its Tartarian architecture the spirit in which the first railway travellers must have set out. So long as Euston endures, whatever improvements humanity may achieve in rapidity of travel and transport, we shall understand the apprehension and awe with which the original adventure must have filled the imagination of mankind. Mrs. Browning took to her bed in order to recover from the effects of a first view of Paddington Station; but Paddington is merely an overgrown conservatory set beside Euston, impressive in its way but entirely lacking in that capacity for permanently and intensely expressing the soul of an epoch, which makes Euston worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as St. Peter’s, or the Pyramids of Gizeh, or even the sublime Parthenon itself. Not only does Euston express the plunge of humanity into a Plutonian era, a plunge more lamentable and swift than Persephone’s from Enna in the dark chariot of Hades; but it peculiarly expresses within the lapse of a whole period the descent of the individual Londoner to the industrial Hell.