She was progressing now in the world’s favour--she was more prosperous than she had ever been--she was lifted out of a state of the hardest and poorest paid toil; the world seemed to begin to smile in earnest upon her. To go back into a species of obscurity with Helen was to deaden, if not destroy, all those brighter hopes which, without making them known to mortal, she had shaped and fashioned and pressed to her heart--it was, in fact, to renew under yet harder terms her desperate battle with life. All these considerations struck her with their full force. The sacrifice required was of herself, not for herself. She gazed thoughtfully--pained thought it was--upon Helen’s beautiful but woe-stricken face. She perceived the lines of acute misery which already had begun to display themselves, and it flashed across her brain at the instant that if she said nay to Helen’s prayer, Helen would go alone into secrecy among strangers, friendless and heart-broken. Lotte supported the trembling, earnest, agonized suppliant in her arms. “If I had not found a friend in my extremity,” she whispered to her, “I had perished. We will go away from here together, and let the world say what it may of me, I am innocent of ill-doing. I can justify myself in the eyes of the Almighty, and I need care little for what others may unkindly believe; I may be humble, but you shall find me, Miss Grahame, a true friend. I will sustain you to the last in your terrible affliction to the best of my power: so compose and calm yourself as well as you can, and leave the rest to me.” “Oh, Lotte, Lotte!” sobbed Helen, kissing her cheek, passionately. “My more than friend, how can I be ever sufficiently grateful to you?” “Not a word--not a word!” cried Lotte, putting her hand gently before her mouth, and conducting her tenderly to a seat. By eight o’clock the next evening, Lotte and her companion had removed from their late abode, without leaving behind them a clue to their new address. Lotte had managed well. She had no debts, so it was not likely that there would be any active inquiries after her when she had left. Her late landlady, who liked all her lodgers to be the patterns of prudence and quietude, was not, after the two appearances of Mr. Bantom, altogether disturbed at losing the two young girls, especially as they had from the first declined her advances, repudiated her familiarity, and had at no time been seduced by her into the sin of gossiping. She knew nothing about their private affairs, from first to last; she, therefore, did not trouble herself to inquire whither they were going, or why they had left her house. She wished, if anything, for inquirers, if there happened to be any, to conclude that she had herself given them warning.