One warm morning when the apple-trees were out, Arthur Brock was sitting with Gresham Powell in the garden of the farm-house where they were lodging in the country, turning over a portfolio full of Powell's sketches, and Powell was looking at them over his shoulder, and discussing them with him. Arthur had just come upon a clever study of the head of a girl in a hat, and was looking hard at it.

"That's a study in starvation," Powell explained. "It's an interesting face, isn't it? She came into a hairdresser's one day when I was there, and sat down just in that attitude, and I sketched her on the spot. She was too far through at the moment to notice me. Look at her pretty hair particularly. You'll see why in the next sketch, which is the sequel."

Brock took up the next sketch hurriedly. It was the same girl in the same hat, but with her hair cut short.

"I asked the barber fellow about her when she'd gone," Gresham pursued. "He'd taken her into an inner room, and when she came out she was cropped like that. She told him she had come to her last shilling, and she had an invalid at home depending on her entirely, and she entreated him to give her all he could for her hair. I believe the chap did too," he seemed so moved by her suffering and gentleness. "What's the matter?"

Brock had risen abruptly with the sketches still in his hand. The colour had left his face, and he looked as pinched and ill as he had done during the early days of his convalescence.

"The matter!" he ejaculated. "I've just discovered what a blind fool I am, that's what's the matter; and I'll keep these two studies with your permission to remind me of the fact. Choose amongst mine any you like instead of them, old chap, but these you must let me have."

Without waiting for an answer, he took the sketches away with him into the house. When he returned a short time afterwards, he was dressed for a journey, and had a travelling bag in his hand.

"I'm going to town," he said, "to see the original of these sketches. I've run up an account with her I shall never be able to settle, but at all events I can acknowledge my debt, dolt that I am! I was that invalid. And I thought myself such a gentleman too! not counting my change and asking no questions, trusting her implicitly: that was my pose from the day you came and poisoned my mind. Before that I had neither trusted nor distrusted, but just taken things for granted as they came, beautifully. I was too self-satisfied even to suspect that she might be imposing her bounty upon me, starving herself that I might have all I required, and sending me off here finally with the last penny she had in the world. I told you I was wondering she did not answer my letters. I expect she hadn't the stamp. But you said it was out of sight out of mind, and she'd be trying it on with some one else in my absence. If I'd the strength, I'd thrash you, Gresham, for an evil-minded bounder."

"I'll carry your bag to the station, old chap," Gresham replied with contrition, "and take the thrashing at your earliest convenience."

Ethel Maud Mary was standing on the steps in the sunshine looking out when Arthur Brock arrived, just as she had stood to watch him depart, but in the interval a happy change had pleasantly transformed her. Her golden hair was brightly burnished again, her blue eyes sparkled, and her delicate skin had recovered its rose-leaf tinge. She wore a new frock, a new ring, a new watch and chain, and there was a new look in her face, one might say, as if the winter of care had passed out of her life with the snow and been forgotten in the spring sunshine of better prospects.

"O Mr. Brock!" she exclaimed; "you back! But none too well yet, judging by appearances."

"Where is Mrs. Maclure?" he demanded.

"I wish I knew!" Ethel Maud Mary rejoined, becoming important all at once. "She's gone for good, that's all I can tell you. O Mr. Brock! fancy her being tip-top all the time, and us not suspecting it, though I might have thought something when I saw the dresses she sold when you were ill, only I'd got the fashion papers in my mind, and didn't know but what she'd been paid in dresses! Come into the parlour; you look faint."

"You said she sold her dresses?"

"Yes; sit down, Mr. Brock. A glass of port wine is what you want, as she'd say herself if she was here; and you'll get it good too, for it's been sent for Ma. My! the things that have come! Look at me—all presents—everything she ever heard me say I'd like to have; and Gwendolen the same."

She got out the wine and the biscuits from a chiffonier as she chattered, and set them before him.

"Yes, she sold her dresses, and her rings, and her books, and every other blessed thing she possessed except what had belonged to an old aunt. She got them out too, one day, but cried so when it came to parting with them, I persuaded her to wait. I said something would turn up, I was sure. And something did, for you went away, and directly after—the next minute, so to speak, for you were scarcely out of sight—a lady stopped her carriage—a fine carriage and pair and coachman and footman all silver-mounted—and ran up the steps in a great way. She'd seen Mrs. Maclure go into the house, and she said she'd been hunting for her everywhere for months, and all her friends were in a way about her, not knowing what had happened to her. I took the lady up to the attic, and there was Mrs. Maclure lying on the floor looking like death, with her head up against the big chair where you used to sit. We thought she was dead at first, but the doctor came and brought her round. He said it was just exhaustion from fatigue and starvation."

Arthur Brock uttered an exclamation.

"You needn't reproach yourself, Mr. Brock," Ethel Maud Mary pursued sympathetically. "You weren't worse than the rest of us. I saw her every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she was always so much the same—happy, you know, in her quiet way."

"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.

"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that disposition—contented, you know; and she was happy from the first; but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"

"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.

"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said, 'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman—a great genius or something of that sort—and do a lot for the world; and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure, so she'd get them all right."

"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in my own handwriting!" he said to himself.

Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.

Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.

"I'm going to find that lady—Mrs. Maclure," he said, jamming his hat down on his head, "if I have to spend the rest of my life in the search."