CHAPTER XV.

"Oh! do not touch it, my dear young lady!" cried Katie, rushing into the room and seizing the lemonade with hands that were trembling. "Listen, miss," she cried in an awful whisper. "They put something into it—the lemonade is drugged!"

[66]

Ida May looked at her with the utmost astonishment. She could scarcely understand her words.

"I saw them do it!" repeated the girl. "I heard him say, 'Put in enough, and it will make her sleep soundly.' It was a white powder he had brought with him," the maid went on, excitedly. "Oh, he makes such a dupe of my poor mistress! He has hypnotized her so that she is afraid to say that her soul is her own. I heard a great deal more that he said, but I can not tell you now. All I can do is to warn you. Go away from here as quickly as you can. They are enemies of yours, both of them."

The girl's words terrified Ida May. She recalled Frank Garrick's words as he walked along the street beside her.

"Take care! beware, girl! You had better not make an enemy of me! If you do, you will rue the hour! For I can make it very unpleasant for you. Ay, you will be sorry that you were ever born."

She had made an enemy of him, and now he was about to take some terrible revenge upon her. She did not have time to exchange another word with the maid, for she had fled from the room as quickly as she had entered it, and she was left alone with her conflicting thoughts.

The window was open, and she threw the contents of the glass out on the pavement below.

She had scarcely set it down, before Mrs. Cole glided into the room.

"Ah! you have drunk the lemonade. That's right!" she added in a triumphant tone. "But I won't sit down to talk to you to-night; you look sleepy. I would advise you to retire at once."

[67]

Ida looked at her steadily, remembering the startling words that Katie had whispered in her ears. Was this a woman or a fiend incarnate? Ida wondered.

Her footsteps had scarcely died away ere Ida took down a long dark cloak, and hurriedly donning it, together with her hat and veil, she gathered her effects together, and thrusting them into a hand-bag, stole silently as a shadow out into the darkened hall. As she passed the sitting-room door she heard the sound of voices.

Frank Garrick was still there.

In the shadow of the vestibule door she saw Katie waiting for her.

"Good-bye, and God bless you, Ida May!" she said, holding out her rough, toil-worn little hand.

"Good-bye, and thank you for the service you have rendered me," she answered, with deep feeling. "If we ever meet again, perhaps it may be in my power to repay you," added Ida, the tears standing out on her long lashes.

She little dreamed that the hour would come when she would be called upon to remember that promise.

Out of the house she stole, out into the darkness of the street.

At last, when faint and almost falling down from exhaustion, she ran directly into the arms of a blue coat who was leisurely passing a corner.

"Halloo there, my good girl!" he cried. "What are you doing out at this hour of the night?"

Trembling piteously, and all unnerved at this unexpected encounter, for a moment the girl was speechless.

[68]

"I am trying to find shelter until to-morrow morning, sir," she said. "Then I shall look for work."

But the officer would not parley with her. He grasped her by the arm, and was forcing the sobbing girl along, when he was suddenly confronted by a young man who was passing, and who had witnessed the affair.

"Officer," he said, sternly, "this is an outrage. Why do you not let that young girl go her way in peace? Why do you molest her?"

"It's my duty to run in every girl who walks the street at night, without a justifiable reason."

"Let me be responsible for this young woman," said the man. "I believe what she told you to be true—that she wants to find a place to stop until day-break, and then she will look for work."

The officer recognized the young man at once.

"If you will vouch for her," he said, "why, she can go her way, certainly."

"I think I'm a tolerably good judge of character," returned the young man, "and I see nothing in her face to mistrust. Take her to one of the missions near at hand. She can certainly stay there till morning."

The policeman made a low bow, and the young man passed on.

"You have interested one of the richest young men in New York in your behalf," said the policeman, after they had passed on.

Ida did not ask the name of her benefactor, though she felt deeply grateful for the kind service he had rendered her.

The matron of the home for friendless girls received the young girl with the kindliness that characterized her.

[69]

She assigned her a little cot, and, wretched and footsore, Ida May threw herself upon it and sobbed herself to sleep.

The matron looked at her as she passed through the long dormitory on her way to her room.

"She has a sweet face!" she muttered, as she turned away; "but one on which a tragedy is written."

Ida May was sitting in the reception-room when the matron passed through it the next morning, and she asked her if there was anything she could do for her.

"If you could only tell me, please, where I could find something to do," she answered. "I must find work, or—starve!"

"When do you wish to look for a situation?" asked the matron, noting how wan and pale the girl looked.

"This day, this very hour!" cried Ida May, eagerly.

The matron hesitated.

"I must first know what sort of employment you are seeking—what you are best suited for."

"I am suited for nothing," Ida answered, despondently. "But that must not deter me. If one did only the work one was fitted for, three-quarters of the world would be idle."

"Would you take a situation as governess if one could be found for you?"

She shook her head dejectedly.

"I have not education enough," she replied. "I did not have much opportunity of going to school when I was a little girl, and I am suffering for it now."

After a moment's pause the matron said, thoughtfully:

"Would you like to try dress-making?"

"That's another thing that I know nothing about,"[70] she said. "I was never taught to mend or sew. I always got out of it. Mother did it for me rather than scold me."

"Perhaps you would take a position as lady's-maid."

A gasp, a shiver passed over her. Quick as lightning there flashed before her mind the humiliation of three or four maids who had accompanied their mistresses to the Ocean Hotel, at Newport, and how Lily Ryder and Hildegarde Cramer had turned up their noses at them because they had pretty faces, and had dared to pin in a pretty ribbon or two in the lace caps they were forced to wear on all occasions.

"I am afraid I wouldn't be a success at that," she declared.

"I don't suppose you would like to be a house-maid," suggested the matron, looking at the small white hands that lay in the girl's lap—the blue-veined hands that were never designed to scour kettles or clean floors. "My dear child," said the matron, compassionately, "there is little else in a great city to do."

There was a pause—a pause broken presently by Ida May.

"Don't you think that if I could get into one of those large stores, I could try on cloaks and hats without requiring any great amount of knowledge of any kind?"

The matron looked doubtful.

"It is not as easy as you may imagine, my dear, to obtain admission into any of those large stores. They have any amount of girls on their books who are waiting eagerly for positions—persons with whom they are acquainted—and they would stand a better chance than a stranger. Besides, I hardly think a situation in a place of that kind would be suitable for one so young. We[71] will look over the paper and read the advertisements."

She touched a bell, and told the attendant who answered it to bring in the morning paper.

"You can look over it, my child," said the matron. "I will return in half an hour. By that time you will perhaps have found something that will suit you."

Left alone, Ida May commenced to look through the "Want" columns.

All through sixteen columns of the paper the girl's eyes eagerly ran. She did not find anything that she was competent to do, and tears of vexation rolled down her cheeks.

Suddenly her eyes rested upon an advertisement which she must have missed in her hurried examination of the column.

    "Wanted.—A few more hands in a cotton-mill. No. — Canal Street. Applicants must apply between the hours of nine and ten, this A. M."

Little dreaming of what was to come of it, Ida May concluded that this was certainly the only position she could dare apply for.