of tea, and then rose hastily from table. Consciousness of terrible guilt could scarcely have made her more miserable than she, good innocent creature, was at the moment.
Guilty people usually have a certain hardness of nature that makes them indifferent to the opinion of others, while Prudence, with all her woes upon her head, was a timid, unsheltered, soft-hearted body, to whom an angry or contemptuous glance was as bad as a blow.
By half-past nine she had donned a black bonnet and mantle, and had left the house, carrying in her hand an envelope on which she had written "good Mrs. Brown's" address. She hailed a passing omnibus that was going in the direction, and, still pursued by her sombre thoughts, tried to imagine what she should do with Augusta if, as she feared, Mrs. Brown's house was not the happy home she had anticipated.
Plummer's Cottages were not easy to find. No one knew where they, were; but then every civilian of whom one asks the way in London is sure to be a stranger, so Prudence applied to a stalwart policeman.
"If I was you, mum, I shouldn't wenture," he said, "they're a low lot down there."
