Lodging in St. Giles’s
The narrator stores his clothes at a former lodging place while he searches for a new position, hoping Mr. Concordance might help clear his name. However, Lavement has anticipated him and poisoned everyone against him. Even the schoolmaster refuses to listen, declaring he will trust no man and will be looked upon as the narrator’s accomplice if he associates with him. Unable to vindicate himself, the narrator hires a cheap garret apartment near St. Giles’s for ninepence per week.
Finding the Lady in Distress
While sitting alone in his garret contemplating his misfortunes, the narrator hears a groan from the adjacent chamber. He rushes in to find a woman stretched on a miserable truckle bed, apparently lifeless. When he revives her with a smelling bottle, he discovers she is the very lady who once captured his heart and whom he had expected to marry. Her situation is deplorable—she confesses she had a base design against him and is now dying from a dangerous illness that has made her repulsive to herself and others. An advertising doctor has fleeced her of all her money and abandoned her three days ago in worse condition than before. She has pawned or sold everything she owned and now faces being turned out into the street.
Relieving Her Misery
The narrator immediately forgives her past intentions against him and pledges to share his last resources with her. He runs downstairs to procure cinnamon water while applying remedies to revive her. She recovers and reveals she has not eaten for forty-eight hours. After restoring her with mulled wine and a toast, he proposes that she lodge in the same room with him to save expense, and he offers to cure her affliction using his own medical knowledge. She accepts with gratitude and proves to be not only an agreeable companion who alleviates his melancholy but also a faithful nurse. When the narrator expresses surprise that a woman of her beauty, sense, and education could fall so low, she replies that these very advantages were the cause of her undoing, prompting the narrator to request the full particulars of her story.
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