“Promises made under such conditions are mere extortions, they don’t count.”

“I fear they do,” Gladys replied.  “I’ve never yet broken my word.”

“Then there’s no hope for me,” Shiel gasped.  “I must go—­it maddens me to see you the affianced bride of that devil.”

He rose to go, but had hardly gained his feet, when his strength utterly failed and he collapsed.  Gladys helped him into a chair, and then flew for some brandy.  In the hall, she met her aunt, who had just returned from an afternoon call.  In a few words she explained what had happened.

“Poor young man,” Miss Templeton said.  “I thought he looked very ill the last time I saw him.  And he came here solely to benefit you!  Well, you have a good deal to answer for, and your face is not only your own misfortune, but other people’s too.  But it will never do for your father to see Mr. Davenport.  He went off in a very bad temper this morning, and if he comes back and finds him here, there’ll be a scene.”

Miss Templeton and Gladys consulted together for some minutes, and then decided to send for a taxi and have Shiel conveyed back to his rooms, Miss Templeton accompanying him.

Miss Templeton knew that Shiel was poor, but like most people who have lived in comfortable surroundings all their lives, she had no idea of what poverty was like—­the poverty of a seven-and-sixpenny a week room in a back street; and when she saw it she nearly swooned.

“Why this is a slum!” she ejaculated as the taxi stopped next door to a fried fish shop in a narrow street swarming with children sucking bread and jam, and rolling each other over in the gutters.

“I don’t wonder the man is ill here!” she said to herself, as the door of the house they stopped at opened and she snuffed the atmosphere.  “The place reeks—­and—­oh! gracious! is this the landlady?”

Yet the woman was ordinary enough—­the type of landlady one sees in all back streets—­greasy face, straggling hair, dirty blouse, black hands, bitten fingernails, short skirts, prodigious feet, a grubby child clinging on to her dress and every indication of the speedy arrival of another.

“I suppose you’re ’is mother hain’t you, mum?” she said, gaping at Miss Templeton’s rather fashionable clothes in open-mouthed wonder.  “I told ’im ’ee ought not to go out, but ’ee never ’eeds what I says.”

Miss Templeton, though not particularly flattered at being taken for Shiel’s mother—­since, like most ladies of mature age, she wished to be regarded as much younger—­nevertheless, thought it better not to disillusion the woman.  The poor, she told herself, often have very decided views on propriety.  With the woman’s aid she got Shiel upstairs, and, as he was too feeble to undress himself, despite his protestations, helped to disrobe him.  She had thought, when she first saw the slum, of returning to Kew at once, but she did no such thing.  She stayed with Shiel; persuaded the landlady to make him some gruel (which proved to be a sorry mess, but had at least the advantage of being hot), and bribed one of the children to fetch the doctor.  Shiel nearly died.  Had it not been for the careful nursing and good food provided by Miss Templeton, who visited him every day, he would never have turned the corner.