, and who stepped forward to interfere.
    »Take it up for her, Joe; can't you?« said this person.
    »What's the good?« replied the man. »You don't suppose the young lady will
see such as her; do you?«
    This allusion to Nancy's doubtful character, raised a vast quantity of
chaste wrath in the bosoms of four housemaids, who remarked, with great fervour,
that the creature was a disgrace to her sex; and strongly advocated her being
thrown, ruthlessly, into the kennel.
    »Do what you like with me,« said the girl, turning to the men again; »but do
what I ask you first, and I ask you to give this message for God Almighty's
sake.«
    The soft-hearted cook added his intercession, and the result was that the
man who had first appeared undertook its delivery.
    »What's it to be?« said the man, with one foot on the stairs.
    »That a young woman earnestly asks to speak to Miss Maylie alone,« said
Nancy; »and that if the lady will only hear the first word she has to say, she
will know whether to hear her business, or to have her turned out of doors as an
impostor.«
    »I say,« said the man, »you're coming it strong!«
    »You give the message,« said the girl firmly; »and let me hear the answer.«
    The man ran up stairs. Nancy remained, pale and almost breathless, listening
with quivering lip to the very audible expressions of scorn, of which the chaste
housemaids were very prolific; and of which they became still more so, when the
man returned, and said the young woman was to walk up stairs.
    »It's no good being proper in this world,« said the first housemaid.
    »Brass can do better than the gold what has stood the fire,« said the
second.
    The third contented herself with wondering what ladies was made of; and the
fourth took the first in a quartette of »Shameful!« with which the Dianas
concluded.
    Regardless of all this: for she had weightier matters at heart: Nancy
followed the man, with trembling limbs, to a small antechamber, lighted by a
lamp from the ceiling. Here he left her, and retired.
 

                                   Chapter XL

           A Strange Interview, Which Is a Sequel to the Last Chapter

The girl's life had been squandered in the streets, and among the most noisome
of the
