Page:Frank Packard - The White Moll.djvu/28

 excellent material, underclothing, silk stockings, shoes and hat were neatly piled together.

Rhoda Gray took the clothing, and went back to the bedside. Gypsy Nan had made little progress in disrobing. It seemed about all the woman could do to cling to the edge of the cot and sit upright.

"What does all this mean, Nan," she asked tensely; "all those things up there—that money?"

Gypsy Nan forced a twisted smile.

"It means I know how bad I am, or I wouldn't have let you see what you have," she answered heavily. "It means that there isn't any other way. Hurry! Get these things off! Get me dressed!"

But it took a long time. Gypsy Nan seemed with every moment to grow weaker. The lamp on the chair went out for want of oil. There was only the guttering candle in the gin bottle to give light. It threw weird, flickering shadows around the garret; it seemed to enhance the already deathlike pallor of the woman, as, using the pitcher of water and the basin from the washstand now, Rhoda Gray removed the grime from Gypsy Nan's face and hands.

It was done at last—and where there had once been Gypsy Nan, haglike and repulsive, there was now a stylishly, even elegantly, dressed woman of well under middle age. The transformation seemed to have acted as a stimulant upon Gypsy Nan. She laughed with nervous hilarity; she even tried valiantly to put on a pair of new black kid gloves, but, failing in this, pushed them unsteadily into the pocket of her coat.

"I'm—I'm all right," she asserted fiercely, as Rhoda Gray, pausing in the act of gathering up the discarded garments, regarded her anxiously. "Bring me a package of that money after you've put those things