Had Harriet Wesden been less disturbed by all the trials of that day, she might have wondered more at Mattie's manner, and have guessed more shrewdly at the truth. But she had suspected unjustly; and feeling now that Sidney loved her, and had always loved her, there were dissipated for ever all bitter memories. It was Mattie's turn to change, but Harriet did not notice it at that time; Mattie had become distant, grave; in the first shock of the real truth—though Mattie had seen it advancing, and thought herself prepared to meet it—it was impossible to smile and feel content. Harriet was anxious that the old friend should stay with her at Camberwell for awhile, but Mattie was firm in her refusal.

"I must get home—I am very weary!" she murmured.

So they had parted, and Mattie had returned home to offer the great news concerning Sidney, and then escape to her room and be seen no more that night. What happened on that night—what resolves, what struggles, we need not dwell on here; she was one who had been injured—the best of women come in for the greatest injuries at times—and it was not a night's thought or struggle which could set her right. She was a heroine, but she was a woman—and women brood on matters which affect the heart for a long, long time after we have been deceived by their looks.

Mattie did not blame Sidney; she saw how far he had been led to deceive himself, and how far pity and gratitude had betrayed him; she knew that he considered himself bound to her still, and that only her word could release him from his. She felt that he was miserable like herself, and she fretted impatiently for the day when she could let him go free to his sphere, and to the only woman whom he had loved.

But the change had not been good for her; she was not resigned yet; her heart was in rebellion. Life before her seemed a dreary vista—a blankness on which no light could shine; ever in the world ahead, she traced her figure plodding onwards without a motive in life, or a hope that had not been lost in it—from first to last, only in various disguises, and on different roads, ever the Stray!

Was she better off now than in the old, old days when she walked the London streets bare-footed, and sang or begged for bread—even stole for it once or twice? No one had loved her then, or taken heed of her; a few had pitied her at that time as they might pity her in this, if she were weak enough to tell her story to them. Her father would pity her, but did he love her, she thought gloomily? She was not inclined to do him justice in that dark estate of hers; he had never wholly understood her; she had become a necessity to his existence, and he was grateful for it, as Sidney had been grateful—nothing more! Yes, she stood alone—for the love and generous hearts around her womanhood, she might be on a mountain top, with the cold, unsympathetic winds freezing her as she lingered there. Almost with regret she looked back at the past, and wondered if it had been well to save her from the dangers that surrounded her; she might have fought against them, and grown up more ignorant perhaps, but more loved. In a different sphere she would have made different friends, and known nothing of this genteel life, where there had been no happiness, and much trouble and remorse!

Hence, by noting Mattie's thoughts, we arrive at the conclusion that this was Mattie's darkest hour; that a change had befallen her which time might remedy, or might harden within her to a wrong—it depended upon the forces brought to bear upon her, and her own heart's strength.

She had heard nothing of Sidney since the experiment in a direct manner. Maurice had met her father in the streets, and informed him that all was progressing well, and Sidney was gaining ground rapidly—that had been "information enough for the Grays," Mattie thought, a little bitterly; there was no occasion for further visits to out-of-the-way districts, now the banker's son could exult over the result of his scheming! From Harriet no news had reached her, and Mattie had not sallied forth in search of her. The day on which Mattie was to have made up her mind and answered Sidney came and went without anyone taking heed of it. When would the sign come that he remembered her?—what would he do and say when he was well again?—what would he think of her?

Mr. Gray did not observe any particular change in his daughter; she was graver and more thoughtful, but he attributed that to her concern for Sidney's recovery. Once he was about to speak of Sidney's proposal to Mattie, and was asked, almost imploringly, to say no more; but he was not alarmed. Mattie was nervous still, and had not recovered the shock yet. She was his dutiful daughter whom he loved, and though her grave face did not become her years, still it was the face of a girl who took things studiously and reverently, and he was proud of it. Serious people suited Mr. Gray; his daughter was becoming every day more worthy of him, thank God!

Still there was one watcher on whom Mattie had not reckoned—a watcher who knew all the story, and guessed more than Mattie could have wished—to whom every change in Mattie was a thing of moment, which affected her. This humble agent, who had watched thus, since the time Mattie was a child, had some inkling of the truth—hearts that have but one idol are sensitive enough. Through the stolidity, the inflexibility of Mattie, Ann Packet read the despair, and charged it with her honest force.

One night, when Mattie thought that the house was quiet for good—meaning by that, that her father and Ann Packet were in their rooms, and asleep—she was sitting by her little toilet-table, dwelling upon a hundred associations, that all verged to one common centre, when a tapping on the panels of her door startled her.

"Who's there?" she asked; "is that you, Ann?"

"Yes—let me in."

She demanded it as a right, rather than as a favour, but Mattie admitted her without opposition. Ann Packet entered with her cap awry—hanging in fact, by strange filaments, to her back comb—and she placed herself in front of Mattie, with her arms akimbo, quite defiantly.

"Now, what's the matter with you?"

"Have I complained?—is there likely to be anything the matter, Ann?"

"Yes, there is. And you'll just tell me, please, what is it!"

"Ann, you forget yourself."

"No, it's you who is forgetting yourself, and me, and all you had a liking and a love for wunst. It's you as has altered so dreffully, that I can only think of one thing to make you different."

"Don't tell me!—don't tell me!" Mattie entreated.

Ann Packet took no heed.

"It's him!" she whispered.

Mattie did not answer; she went back to her seat by the toilet-table, and turned her head away from the one faithful to her, to the last. She was vexed that she had not kept her secret closer, and deceived them all!

"It's no good telling me it ain't him, Mattie—cos it is!" Ann Packet said, after following Mattie to the table, and taking another chair facing her; "there's nothing else—there can't be nothing else, girl. Well, I wouldn't grieve because his sight's come back—that's not right!"

"Do you think I grieve for that?" cried Mattie, fired into defence; "oh! Ann, how can you ever think so badly of me!"

"Then you're afraid that he won't like you any more?"

"How do you know he ever liked me, or said he did?"

"I—I guessed as much."

Ann Packet, we know, possessed a secret as well as Mattie.

"You guessed wrongly."

"I guessed what you did, Mattie—there!"

"I am not always in the right, Ann," was the hard answer; "I am a foolish woman, ever ready to drop into the snare of a few fine words!"

Ann scarcely understood her; but she went on resolutely—

"You think he's tired of you—that it won't come right now. Why not?"

"Nothing can come right out of nothing," said Mattie, passionately, and not too clearly; "I can't be worried like this, Ann. I have nothing to tell you; I am what I have always been. If there be a difference, it is only that I am getting older, and more world-worn. Won't you believe me?"

"No, I won't. I think I know you well enough by this time, and aren't to be done by any reason short of what's a true un. Oh! Mattie gal, you're not happy; you, who have done so much for happiness to other people—and this shan't be, if I can help it! You and Mr. Hinchford must get married; and if there's been a quarrel, that'll mend, it."

"Mr. Hinchford and I will never marry, Ann."

"You mean it?"

"Yes."

"I don't see why," said Ann, reflectively.

"Mr. Hinchford will marry Harriet Wesden—they are old lovers, and true ones."

Ann Packet looked fixedly for awhile at Mattie, and then burst forth:

"Let him! Pr'aps he's fitter for her than you, if he's weak-minded and babyish, and can't tell what's best for him. Let him pack up his traps and go—you can do without him." Ann Packet, carried away by the feelings of the moment, went on, in a higher key. "You're too good for him, and the likes of him, and ain't agoing begging because a pink-faced gal is set afore ye. You're young yet. You've people to love you, and take care on you—you shan't be lonely, and you shall get over all your disappintments and be as happy as the day is long. It isn't for you, Mattie, to fret yourself to death because a little trouble's come, and you can't shake it off yet—you'll show 'em that you've never been a fretting, and that you've got a consolation yet, that their goings on can't take away!"

"Well, Ann, where would be your consolation?" asked Mattie.

"Where you taught me to find it, big words and all—where you will never lose it, Mattie, good as you've growed."

There was something touching in the manner with which Ann Packet snatched from the toilet-table the little Bible that always had a place there, and laid it suddenly in Mattie's lap. Mattie shivered, even cowered somewhat at the demonstration; it had been unexpected as that interview, and for the first time in her life Ann Packet took the vantage ground, and Mattie looked up to her.

"When you turned good, Mattie," said Ann, "you turned to that—you read it to me, and tried to make me read it, telling me that there was comfort to be found there for my loneliness. I found it—so will you, child. You can't miss what you found me!"

"It does not follow," murmured Mattie.

"Yes it does," said Ann, who would not abate one jot of her assertions; "with you, who ain't like tother people, and who never was. You liked tother people better than yourself, and so got posed upon—but you're all the better for it—lor bless you!—you'll see that in there. And, Mattie, there's your father and me, still—we shan't drop away from you. The likes of me," she added, after a little more reflection, "isn't much to brag on, but you'll find me allus true—that's something."

"Everything!"

"You ain't like me, with no one to look to—with no one but you in all the world that would do me a good turn if I wished it ever so. With you there isn't one but'd go anywhere to help you, knowing what a contented soul you are. And when it comes to you, allus so cheerful, getting mopish—you, who finds somethin' good in things that others fret at, and makes us warm and comfurble instead o' shivering with fright—why, it's sixes and sevens all a topsy turvy anyhow, and no one to look up to nowhere!"

"I must come back to my old self, if I have wandered from it so much that your honest heart is touched by the change, Ann," said Mattie. "Perhaps I have been gloomy without a cause—perhaps you are right and I am wrong—though I don't confess to all your implications, mind—and from you I can bear to hear my lesson better than from others at this time. Ann, I'm not going to break my heart."

"God bless you! I knew that."

"I'm going to be just my old self again—nothing more. Not quite that, suddenly, but finding my way back, as it were. There, you'll leave me now—to think."

"Only to think?" said Ann, with a wistful look at the holy volume in her lap; "it's too much thinking that has done this harm."

"To think what is best, Ann," said Mattie, rising, "and, failing that, to pray for it; there, leave me now. Don't fear for me ever again."

"And I haven't done wrong in talking of all this—you were angry when I first comed in, Mattie?"

"I am glad that you came now—I must have been aging very rapidly to have alarmed one who always had such trust in me. It's all over now!"

When Ann Packet had withdrawn, Mattie clasped her hands together and cried again, "It is all over!" as though for ever some hope had been dismissed rather than some fear. Hopes and fears had perhaps gone down the stream of time together, and it was impossible to arrest the sighs for the fair blossoms which had been once. But she was stronger from that day; Mattie was not likely to harden, and it had only needed one warm-hearted counsellor to turn her from the wrong path she was pursuing. The right counsellor had come—a humble messenger, but a true one; one to whom Mattie could listen without shame.

"I was never fit for him—in his new estate, I might have brought him shame rather than happiness—and it was his happiness I tried for, not my own!"

She sank down on her knees and prayed as honest Ann had wished. But she did not pray for the best to happen as she had promised. She knew what was best for her and others—so far as it is possible to know that—and she asked for strength to do her best.