Surely, she thought, God had not saved her through two hundred such miles, to perish at last.

The child was dry and warm, and fast asleep, if she could get some rest in one of the doorways in the lower part of the town, till she was stronger she could fight her way on to Drumston; so she held on to St.Thomas's, and finding an archway drier than the others sat down, and took the child upon her lap.
Rest!--rest was a fiction; she was better walking--such aches, and cramps, and pains in every joint! She would get up and push on, and yet minute after minute went by, and she could not summon courage.
She was sitting with her beautiful face in the light of a lamp.

A woman well and handsomely dressed was passing rapidly through the rain, but on seeing her stopped and said:-- "My poor girl, why do you sit there in the damp entry, such a night as this ?" "I am cold, hungry, ruined; that's why I sit under the arch," replied Mary, rising up.
"Come home with me," said the woman; "I will take care of you." "I am going to my friends," replied she.
"Are you sure they will be glad to see you, my dear," said the woman, "with that pretty little pledge at your bosom ?" "I care not," said Mary, "I told you I was desperate." "Desperate, my pretty love," said the woman; "a girl with beauty like yours should never be desperate; come with me." Mary stepped forward and struck her, so full and true that the woman reeled backwards, and stood whimpering and astonished.
"Out! you false jade," said Mary; "you are one of those devils that Saxon told me of, who come whispering, and peering, and crowding behind those who are penniless and deserted; but I have faced you, and struck you, and I tell you to go back to your master, and say that I am not for him." The woman went crying and frightened down the street, thinking that she had been plying her infamous trade on a lunatic; but Mary sat down again and nursed the child.
But the wind changed a little, and the rain began to beat in on her shelter; she arose, and went down the street to seek a new one.
She found a deep arch, well sheltered, and, what was better, a lamp inside, so that she could sit on the stone step, and see her baby's face.

Dainty quarters, truly! She went to take possession, and started back with a scream.

What delusion was this?
There, under the lamp, on the step, sat a woman, her own image, nursing a baby so like her own that she looked down at her bosom to see if it was safe.