There was a glance shot at her hand. She wore gloves, but saw that it would have been wiser to have told the truth and said "I am unmarried." "As a single room, the rent is seven shillings. You'd be able to give me references, of course?" "I'm afraid I couldn't do that," she said, not a little surprised. "I've only just arrived; my luggage is at the station." "What do you work at?" "Really!" she exclaimed; "I am looking for a room. You want references; well, I will pay you in advance!" "I don't take single ladies," answered the woman bluntly. Mary looked at her bewildered; she thought that she had not made herself understood. "I should be quite willing to pay in advance," she repeated. "I'm a stranger in London, so I can't refer you to anyone here; but I will pay for the first week now, if you like?" "I don't take ladies; I must ask you to look somewhere else, please." They went down in silence. Virtue turned the handle with its backbone stiff, and Mary passed out, giving a quiet "Good-day." Her blood was tingling under the inexplicable insolence of the treatment she had received, and she had yet to learn that it is possible for an unaccompanied woman to seek a lodging until she falls exhausted on the pavement; the unaccompanied woman being to the London landlady an improper person--inadmissible not because she is improper, but because her impropriety is presumably not monopolised. During the next hour, repulse followed repulse. Sometimes, with the curt assertion that they didn't take ladies, the door was shut in her face; frequently she was conducted to a room, only to be cross-examined and refused, as with her first venture, just when she was at the point of engaging it. Sometimes a room was displayed indifferently, and there were no questions put at all, but in these cases the terms asked were so exorbitant that she came out astounded, not realising the nature of the house. It occurred to her to try the places where she would be known--not the one in Guilford Street, the associations of that would be unendurable--but some of the apartments that Carew and she had occupied when they had come to town between the tours. None of these addresses was in the neighbourhood, however, and the notion was too distasteful to be adopted save on impulse.