The Woman who Did by Grant Allen

It was a changed London to which Herminia returned. She was homeless, penniless, friendless. Above all she was declassee. The world that had known her now knew her no more. Women who had smothered her with their Judas kisses passed her by in their victorias with a stony stare. Even men pretended to be looking the other way, or crossed the street to avoid the necessity for recognizing her. "So awkward to be mixed up with such a scandal! " She hardly knew as yet herself how much her world was changed indeed; for had she not come back to it, the mother of an illegitimate daughter? But she began to suspect it the very first day when she arrived at Charing Cross, clad in a plain black dress, with her baby at her bosom. Her first task was to find rooms; her next to find a livelihood. Even the first involved no small relapse from the purity of her principles.

After long hours of vain hunting, she found at last she could only get lodgings for herself and Alan's child by telling a virtual lie, against which her soul revolted. She was forced to describe herself as Mrs. Barton; she must allow her landlady to suppose she was really a widow. Woe unto you, scribes and hypocrites! in all Christian London MISS Barton and her baby could never have found a "respectable" room in which to lay their heads. So she yielded to the inevitable, and took two tiny attics in a small street off the Edgware Road at a moderate rental. To live alone in a cottage as of yore would have been impossible now she had a baby of her own to tend, besides earning her livelihood; she fell back regretfully on the lesser evil of lodgings.