"He was out of the room in a moment. "'Are you sure the house is perfectly respectable, Mr. Beresford?' inquired Mrs. Ravenshaw, who, as a fiction-weaver, no doubt let her imagination run upon the horrors of the great city and the secret iniquities of lodging-house keepers, from Hogarth's time downwards. "I told her that I could trust my own sister to the house in Great Ormond Street, which was kept by my old nurse and my father's old butler, who had retired from service about five years before, and had invested their savings in the furnishing of a spacious old-fashioned house in a district where rents were then low, for the accommodation of all that is most respectable in the way of families and single gentlemen. "'I can vouch for my old nurse Martha as one of the best and kindest of women, as well as one of the shrewdest,' I said. "The girl heard this discussion unmoved and uninterested by the trouble we were taking on her behalf. Her sobs had subsided, but she was crying silently, weeping over the cruel end of a dream which had been more to her than all the waking world. She told me afterwards how much and how real that dream had been to her. "Mrs. Ravenshaw went to her room with her, and helped her to exchange the long white alb-like garment for a tidy black gown, on which the crape trimming had grown rusty with much wear. I can see her now as she came back into the lamplight in that plain black gown, and with her yellow hair rolled into a massive coil at the back of her head, the graceful figure, so girlish, so willowy in its tall slenderness, the fair pale face, and dark-blue eyes heavy with tears. "She had a poor little black-straw hat in her hand, which she put on presently, before we went downstairs to the cab. Gerald and I carried her box. There was no one to object to its removal. The old woman in the basement made no sign. One of the printers let himself in with a latch-key while we were in the hall, looked at us curiously, and went upstairs without a word. "Mrs. Ravenshaw kissed Esperanza, and wished her a friendly good night, promising to do what she could to help her in the future; and then she and her husband hurried away to catch the last train to Shooter's Hill." CHAPTER VIII. "WHAT WAS A SPECK EXPANDS INTO A STAR."