What can I do for you ?" The visitor hesitated and moaned.

All her eager desire to overwhelm Rose Cameron's rival with the shameful news of her bridegroom's previous marriage and living wife had evaporated, leaving only deep sympathy and compassion for the sweet young girl, who looked so kindly, and spoke so gentle.

Yet deeply she felt that, even for this gentle girl's sake, she must reveal the fatal secret! It was dreadful enough and humiliating enough to have had the marriage ceremony read over herself and an already married man, the husband of a living woman; but it would be infinitely worse, it would be horrible and shameful, to let her go off in ignorance, believing herself to be that man's wife--to travel with him over Europe.
All this, the honest woman from Westminster Road knew and felt, yet she had not the courage now to shock that gentle girl's heart by telling the news which must stop her journey.
"Please excuse me; but I must really beg you to be quick in telling me what I can do to serve you.

My time is limited.

Within an hour we have to catch the tidal train to Dover.