Their private conversations, therefore, were frequent, and their communications, unreserved on both sides, so far as woman can bestow confidence and friendship on the subject of her affections or her duty.

This intimacy did not long escape the prying eyes of Nell M'Collum, who soon took means to avail herself of it for purposes which will shortly become evident.
It was about the sixth evening after the day on which the Dead Boxer had published his challenge, that, having noticed Nell from a window as she passed the inn, he dispatched a waiter with a message that she should be sent up to him.

Previous to this the hag had been several times with his wife, on whom she laid serious injunctions never to disclose to her husband the relationship between them.

The woman had never done so, for in fact the acknowledgement of Nell, as her mother, would have been to, any female whose feelings had not been made callous by the world, a painful and distressing task.

Nell was the more anxious on this point, as she feared that such a disclosure would have frustrated her own designs.
"Well, granny," said he, when Nell entered, "any word of the money ?" Nell cautiously shut the door, and stood immediately fronting him, her hand at some distance from her side, supported by her staff, and her gray glittering eyes fixed upon him with that malicious look which she never could banish from her countenance.
"The money will come," she replied, "in good time.