"I beg your pardon," she murmured. "I will not give way like that
again. I dare say I'm faint. I have had no food, no rest--but never
mind that now. Tell me what I am to do. I will try to obey."

"First of all, get out of those muddy, frozen things you have on."

Mrs. Wrandall herself moved stiffly and with unsteady limbs as
she began to remove her own outer garments. The girl mechanically
followed her example. She was a pitiable object in the strong
light of the electrolier. Muddy from head to foot, water-stained
and bedraggled, her face streaked with dirt, she was the most
unattractive creature one could well imagine.

These women, so strangely thrown together by Fate, maintained
an unbroken silence during the long, fumbling process of partial
disrobing. They scarcely looked at one another, and yet they were
acutely conscious of the interest each felt in the other. The
grateful warmth of the room, the abrupt transition from gloom and
cheerlessness to comfortable obscurity, had a more pronounced effect
on the stranger than on her hostess.

"It is good to feel warm once more," she said, an odd timidness in
her manner. "You are very good to me."

They were in Mrs. Wrandall's bed-chamber, just off the little
sitting-room. Three or four trunks stood against the walls.

"I dismissed my maid on landing. She robbed me," said Mrs. Wrandall,
voicing the relief that was uppermost in her mind. She opened a