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should call fey. She's an innocent, a natural. She has been kept from the world. She's an orphan, like you are; but where you had Mrs Sucksby to sharpen you up, she had—no-one.'
    Dainty looked at him then. Her mother had been a drunkard, and got drowned in the river. Her father had used to beat her. He beat her sister till she died. She said, in a whisper:
    'Ain't it terribly wicked, Gentleman, what you mean to do?'
    I don't believe any of us had thought it, before that moment. Now Dainty said it, and I gazed about me, and nobody would catch my eye.
    Then Gentleman laughed.
    'Wicked?' he said. 'Why, bless you, Dainty, of course it's wicked! But it's wicked to the tune of fifteen thousand pounds—and oh! but that's a sweet tune, hum it how you will. Then again, do you suppose that when that money was first got, it was got honestly? Don't think it! Money never is. It is got, by families like hers, from the backs of the poor—twenty backs broken for every shilling made. You have heard, have you, of Robin Hood?'
    'Have I!'she said.
    'Well, Sue and I shall be like him: taking gold from the rich and passing it back to the people it was got from.'
    John curled his lip. 'You ponce,' he said. 'Robin Hood was a hero, a man of wax. Pass the money to the people? What people are yours! You want to rob a lady, go and rob your own mother.'
    'My mother?' answered Gentleman, colouring up. 'What's my mother to do with anything? Hang my mother!' Then he caught Mrs Sucksby's eye, and turned to me. 'Oh, Sue,' he said. 'I do beg your pardon.'
    'It's all right,' I said quickly. And I gazed at the table, and again everyone grew quiet. Perhaps they were all thinking, as they did on hanging days, 'Ain't she brave ?' I hoped they were. Then again, I hoped they weren't: for, as I have said, I never was brave, but had got away with people supposing I was, for seventeen years. Now here was Gentleman, needing a bold girl and coming— forty miles, he had said, in all that cold and slippery weather—to me.
    I raised my eyes to his.
    'Two thousand pounds, Sue,' he said quietly.
    'That'll shine very bright, all right,' said Mr Ibbs.
    'And all them frocks and jewels!' said Dainty. 'Oh, Sue! Shouldn't you look handsome, in them!'
    'You should look like a lady,' said Mrs Sucksby; and I heard her, and caught her gaze, and knew she was looking at me—as she had, so many times before—and was seeing, behind my face, my mother's. Your fortune's still to be made .—I could almost hear her saying it. Your fortune's still to be made; and ours, Sue, along with it…
    And after all, she had been right. Here was my fortune, come from nowhere—come, at last. What could I say? I looked again at Gentleman. My heart beat hard, like hammers in my breast. I said:
    'All right. I'll do it. But for three thousand pounds, not two. And if the lady don't care for me and sends me home, I shall want a hundred anyway, for the trouble of trying.'
    He hesitated, thinking it over. Of course, that was all a show. After a second he smiled, then he held his hand to me and I gave him mine. He pressed my fingers, and laughed.
    John scowled. 'I'll give you ten to one she comes back crying in a week,' he said.
    'I'll come back dressed in a velvet gown,' I answered. 'With gloves up to here, and a hat with a veil on, and a bag full of silver coin. And you shall have to call me miss. Won't he, Mrs Sucksby?'
    He spat. 'I'll tear my own tongue out, before I do that!'
    'I'll tear it out first!' I said.
    I sound like a child. I was a child! Perhaps Mrs Sucksby was thinking that, too. For she said nothing, only sat, still gazing at me, with her hand at her soft lip. She smiled; but her face seemed troubled. I could almost have said, she was afraid.
    Perhaps she was.
    Or perhaps I only think that now, when I know what dark and fearful things were to follow.

    T he bookish old man, it turned out, was called Christopher Lilly. The niece's name was Maud. They lived west of London, out Maidenhead-way,