why, why did I never try before! My sister and her husband are well
off--rich perhaps. If they are still living, if no cruel changes have
come to pass at Newhall, they could help us with a little money. They
might even give us a home. I will start for England to-morrow."

"Nay, my dear, you are not strong enough to travel so far alone. It
seems, indeed, a happy thought this of your rich relations; but you must
not undertake such a journey. You might write."

"No, Gustave, I will trust to no letter; I will go. It will be no pain
for me to humble myself for your sake. I will go straight to my sister. I
know what a tender compassionate heart it is that I shall appeal to."

There was much discussion; but Susan was resolute. To scrape together the
money for the journey she made efforts that were heroic in a nature so
weak as hers. She went to the Monte de Piete with the last of her little
treasures, that one dear trinket to which she had clung even when hunger
was at the door--the gimmal or alliance ring that Gustave had placed upon
her finger before God's altar--the double symbolic circlet which bore on
one side her name, on the other her husband's. This dearest of all her
possessions she surrendered for a few francs, to make up the sum needful
for her journey.

What it cost her to do this, what it cost her to tear herself away
from her sick husband and her only child, who shall say? There are
pangs that cannot be counted, agonies that will come within no
calculation--the infinite of pain. She went. Two kind souls, a labourer
and his wife, lodgers in the same garret-story, promised to care for
and help the invalid and child. There is no desolation in which a child
will not find a friend.