In a day or two she would have nothing, and what would happen then?
When she returned to London to begin a new life, now nearly a year ago, she had sold some and pawned the rest of such possessions as would in future be useful to her.

Part of the money thus obtained had bought the furniture of her rooms; what remained had gone for a few months to supplement her weekly wages, thus making the winter less a time of hardship than it must otherwise have been.

One or two articles yet remained capable of being turned into small sums, and these she now disposed of at a neighbouring pawnbroker's--the same she had previously visited on the occasion of pawning one or two of the things, the tickets for which Harriet Casti had so carefully inspected.

She spoke to no one of her position.

Yet now the time was quickly coming when she must either have help from some quarter or else give up her lodgings.
In food she was already stinting herself to the verge of starvation.
And through all this she had to meet her friends as hitherto, if possible without allowing any trace of her suffering to become visible.
Harriet, strange to say, had been of late a rather frequent visitor, and was more pressing than formerly in her invitations.