The cab that drove Mrs. Drayton into London carried with it a world of memories. Thought in her old head was like the dip of a sea-bird in the sea—now here, now there, now a straight flight, and now a backward swirl. As she rattled over the dark roads of Child Hill and the New End, she puzzled her confused brain to understand the business on which she had been sent. Why had the gentleman been brought out to Hendon? Why, being ill, was he so soon to be removed? Why, being removed, was he not put back into this cab, and driven to the station for Cumberland? What purpose could be served by sending her to the convent for the gentleman's wife, when the gentleman himself might have been driven there? Why was the lady in a convent? The landlady pursed up her lips and contracted her wrinkled brows in a vain endeavor to get light out of the gloom of these mysteries.

The thought of the gentleman lying ill at her house suggested many thoughts concerning her son. Paul was not her son, and his name was not Drayton. Whose son he was she never knew, and what his name was she had never heard. But she had fixed and done for him since he was a baby, and no mother could have loved a son more than she had loved her Paul. What a poor, puling little one he was, and how the neighbors used to shake their heads and say:

"You'll never rear it; there's a fate on it, poor, misbegotten mite!"

That was thirty long years ago, and now Paul was the lustiest young man in Hendon. Ah! it was not Hendon then, but London, and her husband, the good man, was alive and hearty.

"It'll thrive yet, Martha," he would say, and the little one would seem to know him, and would smile and crow when he cracked his fingers over its cot.

Then the landlady thought of the dark days that followed, when bread was scarce and the gossips would say:

"Serve you right. What for do you have an extra mouth to feed?—take the brat to the foundling."

But her husband, God bless him, had always said:

"What's bite and sup for a child? Keep him, Martha; he'll be a comfort to ye yet, old woman."

Mrs. Drayton wiped her eyes as she drove in the dark.

Then the bad times changed, and they left the town and took the inn at Hendon, and then the worst times of all came on them, for as soon as they were snug and comfortable the good man himself died. He lay dying a week, and when the end came he cried for the child.

"Give me the boy," he said, and she lifted the child into his arms in bed. Then he raised his thin white hand to stroke the wavy hair, but the poor hand fell into the little one's face.

Mrs. Drayton shifted in her seat, and tried to drive away the memories that trod on the heels of these recollections; but the roads were still dark, and nothing but an empty sky was to be seen, and the memories would not be driven away. She recalled the days when young Paul grew to be a lusty lad—daring, reckless, the first in mischief, the deepest in trouble. And there was no man's hand to check him, and people shook their heads and whispered, "He'll come to a bad end; he has the wickedness in his blood." Poor lad, it was not his fault if he had turned out a little wild and wayward and rough, and cruel to his own mother, as you might say, jostling her when he had a drop to drink, and maybe striking her when he didn't know what he was doing, and never turning his hand to honest work, but always dreaming of fortunes coming some day, and betting and racing, and going here and there, and never resting happy and content at home. It was not his fault: he had been led astray by bad companions. And then she didn't mind a blow—not she. Every woman had to bear the like of that. You want a world of patience if you have men creatures about you—that's all.

Thinking of bad companions suggested to the landlady's mind, by some strange twist of which she was never fully conscious, the idea of Hugh Ritson. The gentleman who had come so strangely among them appeared to have a curious influence over Paul. He seemed to know something of Paul's mother. Paul himself rummaged matters up long ago, and found that the lady had escaped from the asylum, and been lost. And now the strange gentleman came with her portrait and said she was dead.

Poor soul, how well Mrs. Drayton remembered her! And that was thirty years ago! She had never afterward set eyes on the lady, and never heard of her but once, and even that once must be five-and-twenty years since. One day she went for coal to the wharf at Pimlico, and there she met an old neighbor, who said: "Mrs. Drayton, your lodger, she that drowned herself, came back for the babby, but your man and you were shifted away." And to think that the poor young thing was dead and gone now, and she herself, who had thought she was old even in those days, was alive and hearty still!

By this time the cab was rattling through the busy streets of London, and the train of the landlady's thoughts was broken. Only in a vague way did she know where she was going. The cab was taking her there, and it would take her back again. When they reached the convent she had to ask for Mrs. Ritson, and say she was sent to take her to St. Pancras Station to meet her husband there, and return to Cumberland by the train at midnight. That was all.

The clock of the abbey was marking the half-hour after eleven as the cab passed into Parliament Square. In another minute they drew up before the convent in Abbey Gardens.

The cabman jumped from the box, rang the bell, and helped Mrs. Drayton to alight. The iron gate and the door in the portico swung open together, and a nun stood on the threshold, holding a lamp in her hand. Mrs. Drayton hobbled up the steps and entered the hall. A deep gloom pervaded the wide apartment, in which there were but two wicker chairs and a table. The nun wore a gray serge gown, with a wimple cut square on her chest, a girdle about her waist, and a rosary hanging by her side.

"Can I see a lady boarder—Mrs. Ritson?" said the landlady.

The nun started a little, and then answered in a low, melancholy voice, in which the words she spoke were lost. Mrs. Drayton's eyes were now accustomed to the gloom, and she looked into the nun's face. It was a troubled and clouded face, and when it was lifted for an instant to her own, Mrs. Drayton felt chilled, as if a death's-hand had touched her.

It was the face of the mother of Paul! Older, sadder, calmer, but the same face still.

The nun dropped her eyes, and made the sign of the cross. Then she walked with a quick and noiseless step to the other end of the hall, and sounded a deep gong. In a moment this summoned a sister—a novice, dressed like the first, except all in white. Mrs. Drayton was now trembling from head to foot, but she repeated her question, and was led into a bare, chill room, and left alone.