She promised
me often that she would, but she delayed taking the steps I pointed out
from time to time, for she was timid and dejected to a degree which
showed how deeply sorrow had taken hold of her young heart; and perhaps
she thought justly that the most upright judge and the most righteous
tribunals could do nothing to repair her heaviest wrongs. Something,
however, would perhaps have been done, for it had been settled between us
at length, but unhappily on the very last time but one that I was ever to
see her, that in a day or two we should go together before a magistrate,
and that I should speak on her behalf. This little service it was
destined, however, that I should never realise. Meantime, that which she
rendered to me, and which was greater than I could ever have repaid her,
was this:--One night, when we were pacing slowly along Oxford Street, and
after a day when I had felt more than usually ill and faint, I requested
her to turn off with me into Soho Square. Thither we went, and we sat
down on the steps of a house, which to this hour I never pass without a
pang of grief and an inner act of homage to the spirit of that unhappy
girl, in memory of the noble action which she there performed. Suddenly,
as we sate, I grew much worse. I had been leaning my head against her
bosom, and all at once I sank from her arms and fell backwards on the
steps.
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