‘I said “No” again.’ The fire born of that last conflict dies away, and she falls back weakly into the seat behind her. ‘That night I ran away. I suppose in his rage he forgot to lock the door after him, and so I found the matter easy. It was a wet night and very cold. I was tired, half dead with hunger and with bitter pain. That was the night—’ She comes to a dead stop here, and turns her face away from him. A shame keener than any she has known before, even in this recital made to him, is filling her now. But still she determines to go on. ‘That was the night your servant found me!’ ‘Poor child!’ says Wyndham. His sympathy—so unexpected—coming on her terrible agitation, breaks her down. She bursts into a storm of sobs. ‘I would to God,’ says she, ‘that I had died before he found me! Yes—yes, I would, though I know it was His will, and His alone, that kept me alive, half dead from cold and hunger as I was. I can’t bear to think of that night, and what you must have thought of me! It was dreadful—dreadful! You shrank from me because I courted death so openly. Yes—yes, you did’—combating a gesture on his part—‘but you did not know how near I was to it at that moment. I was famished, bruised, homeless—I was almost senseless. I knew only that I could not return to that man’s house, and that there was no other house to go to. That was all I knew, through the unconsciousness that was fast overtaking me. To die seemed the best thing—and to die in that warm room. I was frozen. Oh, blame me, despise me, if you like, but anyone would have been glad to die, if they felt as homeless and as starving as I did that night!’ ‘Who is blaming you?’ says Wyndham roughly. ‘Good heavens! is there a man on earth who could blame you, after hearing so sad a story? Because you have met one brute in your life, must you consider all other men brutes?’ His manner is so vehement that Ella, thinking he is annoyed with her, shrinks from him. ‘Don’t be angry with me,’ says she imploringly. ‘Angry with you!’ says he impatiently. ‘There is only one to be angry with, and that is that devil. Where does he live?’ She gives him the road, and the number of the house where she had lived with the Moores—a road of small houses, chiefly occupied by artisans and clerks; a road not very far from the Zoological Gardens. ‘But what are you going to do?’ asks she nervously. ‘You will not tell him I am here?’ ‘Of course not. But it is quite necessary that a fellow like that should feel there is a law in the land.’ ‘But if you say anything about me,’ says she in a tone now thoroughly frightened, ‘he will search me out, no matter in what corner of the earth I may be.’ ‘I don’t think so, once I have spoken to him,’ says the barrister grimly. ‘You mean’—she looks at him timidly—‘you think that if—’ She breaks off again. ‘He told me that his wife, who he said was my aunt, had made him guardian over me, and that he would be my master for ever.’