All next morning Holdsworth kept watch for Dolly and his child, but did not see them. But Mr. Conway had passed when Mrs. Parrot happened to be in the room laying the cloth for dinner, and the woman had directed Holdsworth’s attention to him. The glimpse he obtained, however, was very brief. All that he saw was a sandy-whiskered gentleman, with a tilted hat, aim with rather uncertain legs for the gate with the brass plate upon it, and vanish with an alacrity that was painfully suggestive of a disordered vision.

“There he goes! Drunk as usual!” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, disgustfully, giving the table-cloth an angry twitch.

“How does he live? I have seen nobody call at his house yet!”

“No, sir; and I don’t think you’re likely to. Persons as can’t get served at the other tooth-drawers are too sensible to walk all this way to get their jaws broke.”

“Are they very poor, do you think?”

“Why, sir, I suppose he must pay his rent somehow, but I don’t know as he does anything more. I’m told that they owe money all over the town, but the tradespeople make no fuss, because, as Mr. Jairing the butcher says to me, ‘It’s all very fine, Mrs. Parrot,’ he says, ‘talkin’ of hexecutions, but what’s the use o’ going to the expense of a distress when there’s nothing to seize?’ There’s a deal in that, sir.”

“God help them!” muttered Holdsworth to himself. Then looking up he said, “Do you think Mrs. Conway would let her little girl come and have tea with me this afternoon?”

“I should think she would, sir, and feel honoured by the askin’.”

“I have not seen the child to-day.”

“No, sir! Mrs. Conway don’t often come out. She kapes a bit of a wench as does her arrands, and I’ve told the slut times out o’ mind to put her bonnet on, an’ not go flyin’ down the road as though a orficer was arter her, disgracin’ of our neighbourhood, and frightening away any respectable person as might be comin’ wi’ a bad tooth. I don’t think of him, sir. If I could put a sixpence in his way I would, for the sake of his wife an’ the little one.”

“How shall I invite little Nelly if I do not see her?”

“I’ll run across, if you like, when I’ve got your dinner ready, and ask Mrs. Conway if she’ll let the child come. Perhaps you’ll just watch, sir, and tell me when the husband leaves the house. I don’t want to meet him if I can help it.”

An hour elapsed before Holdsworth saw Mr. Conway pass on his way to the High Street, on which he rang the bell and informed Mrs. Parrot that she might now call on Mrs. Conway in safety.

His anxiety to have the child impressed his landlady as a very odd thing. She could understand his admiration of Nelly; she could also understand his calling her in and giving her a kiss and a present. No man’s heart, she considered, could fail to be warmed by the sight of so pretty a little girl. But she could not understand him posting himself at the window, and looking troubled because he did not see the child, and showing himself as anxious to have her to tea as if she was a grown woman, and he was courting her.

She sailed across the road (watched by Holdsworth), her cap-strings streaming over her shoulders, and walked up to the door of the Conways’ house, and gave a single knock. She was kept waiting so long, that when the door was at last opened by the “bit of a slut,” who, to judge by her complexion, appeared to have been devoting the last hour or two to black-leading her face, Mrs. Parrot, instead of asking for Mrs. Conway, began storming at her for “kaping respectable folks on the doorsteps while she sat readin’ ha’porths o’ bad fiction by the kitchen fire.”

“I wasn’t readin’. I didn’t hear yer. Who do you want—missus?” said the girl sulkily.

“Why, Mrs. Conway, of course. Show me in, and go an’ tell her at once that I’m here,” replied Mrs. Parrot, not waiting to be shown in, but pushing into the middle of the passage.

The girl shambled off, and presently Mrs. Conway came up the kitchen stairs. The skirt of her dress was pinned up at the waist, and her arm-sleeves were above her elbows, displaying the whiteness and fineness of the skin, though the arms were very thin.

“How do you do, Mrs. Parrot? You will excuse my wretched untidy appearance. I am doing a little washing downstairs, and would not keep you waiting whilst I made myself presentable.”

“Niver mention it, ma’am,” answered Mrs. Parrot, looking with pleasure, mingled with pain, at the sweet face, in which, now that there was no hat to shadow it the sorrow and care were clearly seen. Her prettiness was but enhanced by the looped-up skirt, showing the little feet and small firm ankles. Her bright hair was in disorder, and there was the little flush of recent exertion on her cheeks.

“I’ve called wi’ a message from my gentleman lodger. He wants Miss Nelly to drink tea with him, and sent me across to ask you to let her come.”

“The same gentleman who gave Nelly a shilling yesterday?” asked Dolly, looking half surprised and half pleased.

“Yes, ma’am. He’s a very nice person, and seems uncommon partial to children. He’s been all the morning on the look-out for your little gal, and I hope you’ll let her come, ma’am, and bring her doll wi’ her, for I think he’ll take it to heart if you refuse.”

“Oh, I will certainly send her. Will half-past three do? I shall have to dress her. Pray give my compliments to the gentleman, and thank him for his kindness. You have not told me his name.”

“Hampden, ma’am; Mr. Hampden.”

“I have not yet seen him. Is he an old man? Few young men care for children.”

“To tell you the truth, ma’am, I’ve got no more idea of his age, than I have of the age of my house. He’s got a deal o’ gray hair on his head, and yet he isn’t an old man either, although to see him walk, leanin’ on his stick, you’d take him to be sixty. I think he means to make friends wi’ your little gal, if you’ll let him, just for want o’ company. He don’t seem to know anybody in Hanwitch, nor to follow any callin’ like. I doubt he’s a bit rich; but you see, ma’am, he only took my lodgin’s the day before yesterday, and I’ve not had time to make him quite out yit.”

Saying this, Mrs. Parrot dropped a courtesy, and turned to depart, taking a quick comprehensive glance at the dingy little parlour as she passed, and mentally comparing it with her own rooms.

Holdsworth was at the window when she returned, and she could hardly forbear laughing, so tickled was she by his expectant face.

“Mrs. Conway’s compliments, sir, and she says that her little gal will be with you at half-past three, thankin’ you for your kindness,” said she, her eyes twinkling with her suppressed but perfectly good-natured mirth.

“Thank you, Mrs. Parrot, for taking so much trouble,” exclaimed Holdsworth gleefully. “What time is it now? A quarter to three. I shall just have time to walk into the High Street and buy a cake. She will like a cake—a plum-cake I think; and shall I get some marmalade? Yes, she will enjoy marmalade—and what else? Tell me, Mrs. Parrot; what do little children like?”

“Why, mostly sweet things, sir. I guess the marmalade’ll take Miss Nelly’s fancy. But don’t you trouble, sir; I can run out and buy you what you want.”

“No—I am obliged to you. There are other things she might like which I shouldn’t be able to remember without seeing them. We will have tea at four, Mrs. Parrot. I shall be back in twenty minutes.”

Mrs. Parrot watched him leave the house and walk down the road as swiftly as he could, leaning on his stick. “Well, if iver I saw the like of this!” she exclaimed aloud. “I’ll not tell mother; it might scare her. There’s something downright sing’ler in the notion of a stranger takin’ all this trouble, and goin’ almost wild-like all along of a little gal he never saw before yisterday. Some folks ’ud call it alarmin’.”

Her nerves, however, were equal to the occasion; for whilst Holdsworth was away, she journeyed upstairs and unlocked a little glass-fronted cupboard, screwed into a corner of her bedroom, from which she took a teapot, a cream-jug, and two cups and saucers of brilliantly-coloured china; likewise from an open box under her bed a tray magnificently decorated with mother-of-pearl birds of paradise seated on pink trees, and surrounded by a prospect not to be paralleled on this side the moon.

She returned to the kitchen with these things, and then entered the garden and picked a bouquet of sweet-scented flowers, with which she furnished the tray. Then she set to work upon a loaf of bread, and produced in no time a number of thin and appetising slices; which done, and the tray being arranged, she fell back a step to admire the effect.

At a quarter-past three Holdsworth returned, followed by a boy with his arms full of bags. He called to Mrs. Parrot, who came out and took the bags from the boy, and placed them upon the dining-room table. More things than edibles had been purchased; though of these there was enough to give an evening party upon—fruit, cakes, pots of jam, gingerbread-nuts, sweetmeats, tarts; there was a doll; there was also a horse and cart; and there was an immense box of bricks.

Mrs. Parrot turned pale, and was much too astonished to speak, as Holdsworth thrust the bags and pots, the buns and the tarts, into her arms, and requested her to take them at once into the kitchen, and display them on plates to the very best advantage, ready for the little one when the bell should ring for tea. He then hid the toys in a closet, and stationed himself at the window to watch for Nelly.

Punctual to the moment, she came out of the house, led by the hand by the servant, who looked horribly grimy. Holdsworth ran to the door and opened it, and when the child came timidly up to him, snatched her up in his arms, and hastened with her into the sitting-room, kissing her all the way.

“There’s a good little pet,” he said sitting down and keeping her on his knee. “Let me take off your hat. Nelly mustn’t be afraid of me.”

“My own! my own!” he murmured, as his lingering fingers caressed her soft hair, and he gazed with passionate love at her big eyes, roving with a half-scared expression from his face around the room.

“Me dot dolly,” she said, producing the old toy from under her cloak.

“Ay, that’s right; and dolly shall have a slice of cake all to herself. Here she is!” he exclaimed, seeing Mrs. Parrot peeping in at the door. “Will you take her hat and this little cape?”

“How do you do, dear?” said Mrs. Parrot, giving the child a kiss.

“Look at my frock!” exclaimed Nelly, holding up her dress, which had a little embroidery work upon it, and which bore marks of much patient mending and darning.

“Beautiful! beautiful!” cried Mrs. Parrot. “I’ve set the kettle on to bile, sir, and tea’ll be ready whiniver you’re pleased to want it.”

So saying, she dropped a courtesy, being greatly impressed by Mr. Hampden’s undoubted wealth, illustrated by his prodigal purchases, and withdrew.

Father and child! A lonely man, gentle, honourable, faithful, as any whom God in His wisdom has chosen to afflict, opening his heart to receive and fold up the sweetness and innocence of his own little baby!

Ah! I think even Mrs. Parrot might have guessed the strange mystery of this man’s desire for the child, had she but watched him from some secret hiding-place when the door had closed upon her.

He surrendered himself to his emotion when he felt himself alone with the little girl, and for many moments could not speak to her, could do no more than look at her, searching her fairy lineaments with something almost of a woman’s ecstasy, reading his brief history of hopeful, beautiful love in her fresh deep eyes, and drinking in greedily the memories of the days that were no more, which thronged from the face that mirrored his as it was when Dolly knew him, as the dew-drop mirrors the sun.

But he was recalled to himself by the gathering expression of fear in Nelly. Indeed, there was something alarming enough to her in the concentrated passion, all soft and holy as it was, that shone in his fixed regard.

Such abandonment to feeling would not do, if the part he was to play was to be complete.

He placed her gently on the floor, and, going to the cupboard, brought out the doll.

“See, Nelly! here is a little lady I invited expressly to drink tea with you. She told me that she had often seen you pass her shop in the High Street, and that she wanted to live with you. You must take her home when you leave me, will you?”

Nelly stood for a moment transfixed by the spectacle of this gorgeously-dressed creature, resplendent in blue gauze, bronzed boots, gilt sash, and flowing red feather. Then—so permanent is human affection—she threw down her old doll and ran forward, with outstretched arms, to welcome and hug the stranger.

But the sum of her amazement was not yet made out. Once more Holdsworth dived into the mysterious cupboard and produced the horse and cart, which, he told Nelly, was the chariot that had brought the young lady to his house, and without which she never condescended to take the air, being much too fine a lady to walk. The box of bricks followed; and presently Nelly was on the floor, taking up the three toys one after the other in quick succession, her avariciousness of enjoyment perplexed by the number of the objects that ministered to it.

Holdsworth knelt by her side and watched her face.

A man need not be a father to find something elevating and purifying in the contemplation of a child’s countenance, varied by tiny innocent emotions, reflecting the little play of her small passions, as her eyes reflect the objects that surround her. But that subtle and sacred bond, which unites a child’s life to a parent’s heart, creates an impulse to such contemplation which makes the pleasure sweeter than any other kind of pleasure, by the infusion of an exquisite pathos, mingled with the only kind of pride to which vanity seems to contribute nothing.

The natural bitterness which Holdsworth felt in thinking that his little girl did not know him, that misfortune had thrust his love out of the sphere of her own and his wife’s life, was converted into tender melancholy by the emotions Nelly’s presence excited, and left his pleasure unalloyed by pain. Here was a little being who was his at least; his by a right no sin, no folly, no error could challenge; indisputably his, to survive, if God permitted, into his future, when the time should come for him to call himself aloud by the name of Father, and ask her love as some recompense for that present sacrifice of his which was enforced by grand obedience to the high laws of morality.

How hard it was to be thus true to himself, thus true to his wife, thus true to the little one who must needs share some portion of that obligation of shame which would befall them all, were he to confess himself—Judge! for you see him kneeling by his child’s side; you may behold his love in his eyes; you may know that no upturned luminous glance of hers but thrills along the chords of his passion, and makes his heart gush forth its overfull tenderness, even until his sight grows humid, and he turns his thoughts in a piteous aside to God for courage and will, so to sustain this strange, pathetic happiness, that no sorrow shall follow it.

“Nelly, we will have tea now,” he says; and he rings the bell, and then comes up to the child again, and, turns her face up, kisses her suddenly, and seats himself at a distance with his chin upon his hand.

Then Mrs. Parrot came in, armed with the tray, which she placed upon the table, while she challenged her lodger’s admiration by lightly lifting her gray eyes and smirking.

Yes, it was very beautiful. The bouquet made the room odoriferous at once; the birds of paradise looked splendid; the cups were elegant enough to induce one to go on drinking tea with stubborn disregard of the nervous system, for hours and hours together, if only for an excuse to handle them and have them under the eye. In order to bring little Nelly’s head a little above the level of the table, Holdsworth piled three or four of the folios on a chair, on which he seated her; and that the two dolls might be seen to advantage, he very ingeniously tied them together, and set them on a chair, leaning against the table, with a plate and a slice of bread-and-butter before them; whereat Nelly laughed rapturously, clapping her hands and filling the room with sweet sounds.

It was all Fairyland, these cups and toys and cakes and what not, to the little girl, whose tea at home was often no more than a slice of dry bread, when her step-father had drunk away the money he should have given to his wife, and left her without the means to purchase an ounce of butter. The sun was at the back of the house, and its rules of yellow light flooded the floor at the extremity of the apartment, and flung a golden haze over that portion of the room where the table stood. There was something so charming in the scene thus delicately lighted, that Mrs. Parrot, who had been struggling with her modesty for some minutes, while she fidgeted over the plates and dishes, suddenly exclaimed:

“I humbly beg parding for the liberty, sir, but would you mind mother just takin’ one peep? She came into the kitchen while I was dressin’ the tray, an’ I told her what was goin’ forward, an’ I think it ’ud do her heart good to see this beautiful show.”

“Let her come by all means,” replied Holdsworth, touched and diverted by the perfect simplicity of these people.

Presently fell a respectful knock, and Mrs. Parrot re-entered, followed by a Roman nose that came and vanished like an optical delusion near the handle of the door.

“Come in, mother; the gentleman’s kind enough to say you may,” said Mrs. Parrot; and in faltered the old woman, dropping an aged courtesy, and making her spectacles chatter in their wooden case as she strove to withdraw them.

“Ain’t this a picter, mother?”

“Niver see anything to aquil it,” replied the old lady, putting on her spectacles and gazing around her with many a convulsive motion of the head. “Why, Sairey, them’s our best cups!”

“Yes, I told you I was usin’ them. Don’t you see the little gal, mother?”

“See her? Yes,—of course I do. But she don’t want an old ’ooman like me to kiss her, eh, my pretty? I’m very much obleeged, sir,” dropping a creaking courtesy, “for the sight o’ this table.”

“Would your mother like one of these cakes for her tea?” said Holdsworth.

“Oh, sir, you’re very good.—Mother, the gentleman wants to know if you’ll accept of one of these cakes for your tea?”

“Thank ye, sir. I relish a bit o’ somethin’ sweet now and agin,” replied the old lady, dropping another courtesy as she received the cake. “I was cook to Squire Harrowden, lar’ bless yer! I dessay it were years afore you was born, and they did say as there niver was my aquil i’ the makin’ o’ pie-crust. I’ve cooked for as many as a hundred and tin persons, ay, that I have,” with intense earnestness, “as Sairey’ll bear me witness, for she’s heerd the story from her own father, as was gamekeeper to the Squire, an’ a more likely man you niver see, sir. His name was Cramp, which he was a Croydon man, as you may happen to know the name if you was iver in them parts.”

“Come, mother, we have stopped long enough,” exclaimed Mrs. Parrot, putting her hand upon the old lady’s arm.

They both courtesied; and then the old woman let fall the cake, which rolled under the table. Holdsworth recovered it for her, which act of condescension was so overwhelming that she let the cake fall again; on which Mrs. Parrot lost her temper, and hurried the old dame through the door at a velocity to which her legs were quite unused, and possibly quite unequal. She might be heard feebly remonstrating in a voice similar to the sound a key makes when turned in a rusty lock; and then the door was closed, and Holdsworth and Nelly were left alone.

If Mrs. Parrot had dared, she would have been glad to advise Holdsworth “not to let the little gal eat too much, there bein’ nothing worse nor sweetstuff for young stomachs, which finds milk-and-water sometimes too much for ’em.” But, happily, Nelly was not a glutton; besides, the majority of human beings at her age eat only as much as they want, and no more; we wait until our judgment is matured, until life is precious, until we have experienced most of the distempers which arise from an overloaded stomach, before making ourselves thoroughly ill with over-feeding!

By this time the child was perfectly at home with Holdsworth, and enjoying herself immensely, varying a bite at a slice of cake with a bite at some bread covered with jam, sipping the good milk Holdsworth had obtained for her with great gravity, and staring at the dolls, and then bending to make sure that her bricks had not taken to their heels while she was looking at the horse and cart, and that the horse had not bolted with the cart while she was looking at her bricks.

Holdsworth scarcely removed his eyes from her face. When he spoke to her there was a softness in his voice that melted like music on the ear.

At last she pushed her plate away, and Holdsworth rang the bell, and giving Mrs. Parrot private instructions to make up a parcel of the remainder of the cakes, etc., ready for Nelly to take home with her, he clasped the child’s hand and went with her into the garden, she holding the new doll, he dragging the horse and cart after him.

There was a square of grass in this garden, and a bench on it; and here Holdsworth sat, while Nelly played with her toys.

It was a roomy, old-fashioned garden, with aged walls, full of rusty nails and rotten ligatures, and a few tall pear-trees sheltering a small circumference of ground at their feet; and many fruit-trees sprawling wildly against the walls. The moss was like a carpet on the flint walk, and the box at the side of the bed was high and thick; and at the top of the garden was an old hencoop, hedged about with wirework, behind which some dozen hens scratched the soil for worms, and made the air drowsy with their odd, half-suppressed mutterings.

Moods possess us, sometimes, which such a scene as this will affect more pleasurably than a garden bursting with exotics, and tended with the highest artistic judgment. There is something very calming in homely shrubs, and old fruit-trees with their roots hidden by the long, vivid grass, and uncouth weeds thrusting their rude shapes among violet beds; and the solemn chatter of barn-door hens sunning themselves in hot spaces, or lying like dead things with a wing half-buried in sand and dirt, will sometimes impart a more agreeable tranquillity to the mind than the choicest songs of nightingales warbled in groves under a full moon.

Holdsworth suffered the child to have her full sportive will for some time, and then, thinking her tired, called her to him.

She ran to him at once, and he perched her on his knee.

“Is Nelly afraid of me now?”

“No. Nelly dot afraid. Nelly loves ’oo.”

In proof whereof she put her mouth up for a kiss.

“Will Nelly come to see me every day?”

“Det.”

“Does Nelly’s papa love her?”

He believed that she had been taught to regard Mr. Conway as her papa. It was a sore tax upon the gentle mood then on him to put the question in that form, but he wished to learn if his child were well treated by her step-father.

The question puzzled her. Indeed, she was a very little thing, and backward in her speech. It was delicious to see her knit her tiny brows, and gaze with her full, deep, earnest eyes on Holdsworth, with a half-intelligence in her face, and all the rest child-sweetness.

Like all children, who cannot answer a question, she remained silent; a hint parents would sometimes do well to take.

“Does Nelly get plenty to eat?”

“Det.”

This was not quite true; but then Holdsworth, who knew nothing of children, was ignorant that little infants will borrow their answers from your voice or face, so that to get an affirmative from them you have only to speak or look affirmatively.

“Does mamma teach Nelly to pray?”

“Det. Nelly pray.”

And, to prove how well she could pray, she put her two hands together, hung down her head, and whispered:

“Dod bless dear mamma and Nelly. Dod bless little Nelly’s dear papa.”

She looked up coyly, as though ashamed.

Dear reader, smile not at these simple words, nor think them puerile. When we behold a little child praying, we know how the angels worship God.

A sob broke from Holdsworth as she ceased. Who was little Nelly’s dear papa but he? His wife’s love had dictated that prayer, and it was their child who told him of her love. Ah! God had deigned to hear that prayer, whispered by a wife’s heart through the lips of her infant, and had blessed him with this knowledge of her devotion, and had brought him from afar to know it.

No; not want of love had made her faithless to his memory. Faithless she was not—she could not be if her heart nightly spoke to God of him through her child.

Let him look at the little girl now; let him feel the fulness of the love she inspired in him; let him imagine that he was desolate and friendless, and in want, and that this frail flower, this tender little lamb, pined and grew wan and ragged for food and raiment; let him mingle with his own emotion the pain and torment which a mother’s heart would feel in the presence of this baby’s sufferings; and then let him condemn his wife, if he could, for sacrificing her memories and accepting food and shelter from any hand that offered them under any honourable conditions.

He could not speak again for some time; and Nelly, growing tired of sitting, slipped from his knee, and betook herself to her toys.

Then his eyes kindled anew, and he watched her eagerly. He longed to ask her questions—to hear her lisp him sweet assurances of his Dolly’s love—to learn from her little lips that her mother was his, had been, would always be his, though separated from him by a barrier as formidable as death. But there was no question he could put which the child might not repeat again; for, backward as she was in speech, her small imperfect language would be intelligible enough to the mother. His curiosity would be too unnatural in a stranger not to excite Dolly’s suspicions; and if they should not even lead to the discovery of his secret, they might be the means of breaking off all intercourse between him and his child.

And so he remained silent; and presently, as he sat watching the little creature pushing her doll to and fro in the cart and talking to herself, a calm came upon his heart—a sense of exquisite repose and security. You would have said, to look upon him and remark the placid sweetness that reigned in his face, that the child’s prayer had veritably done its office—that God had blessed him indeed.

A long hour passed. The garden was fresh and cool; the declining sun mellowed the gray walls and kindled many little suns in the vine-draped windows; the sparrows flitted quickly with short chirrups from tree to tree; and the crooning of the hens added completeness to the peace and tenderness that breathed in the air.

Once again Nelly was on Holdsworth’s knee, fetching vague replies from her struggling perceptions for his questions, when Mrs. Parrot came out of the house and said that Mrs. Conway was in the sitting-room, waiting to take her little girl home.

Holdsworth glanced quickly at the window of the room, but did not see her. He put the child down hurriedly, and said:

“There, my little pet, run along with Mrs. Parrot.”

“Won’t you come and speak to Mrs. Conway, sir?” asked Mrs. Parrot. “She wants to thank you for your kindness.”

“No—no—pray don’t let her call it kindness,” stammered Holdsworth, who was very pale.

“I’m sure she’ll take it unkind if you won’t let her thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Parrot earnestly. “She’s been watching you both through the window for the last five minutes, an’ I couldn’t help tellin’ her what a fine treat you have given Miss Nelly. Besides, she’s seen them toys,” she added, looking at Nelly’s presents.

A whole lifetime of nervous pain was in that moment’s pause. Could he meet her, speak to her, and remain unknown? His desire was to hide. It seemed inconceivable that in five years such a change should be wrought in him as to render him unrecognisable by his wife.

But the pressing necessity of immediate action was too sudden to give his imagination time to alarm his judgment. He must dare the encounter, since it was not to be obviated by any means which might not prove more productive of suspicion than bold confrontment.

He laid the utmost tyranny of his will upon his feelings, and saying:

“Perhaps you are right, Mrs. Parrot. Mrs. Conway will think me rude if I do not see her,” took Nelly’s hand and walked with her to the house.

Dolly was seated in an arm-chair near the fireplace, leaning her cheek on her hand. Her attitude showed that she had been watching the group in the garden.

She stood up when Holdsworth entered and bowed to him.

Nelly ran to her, holding up her doll.

“Look, mamma!”

The action was timely; it enabled Holdsworth to walk to the side of the window, where the shadow lay darkest, and there he stood.

This he had sense enough to do; but for a moment or two the room swam round him, and he grasped the back of a chair.

Would she know him?

That thought swept like a galvanic shock through him, and made his blood tingle.

It brought hope with it and fear; a wild paradoxical emotion of yearning love and the blighting sense of the sorrow and dishonour recognition would involve.

“I have to thank you very much, Mr. Hampden, for your attention to my little girl,” she said in a low sweet voice—how remembered!

“Her society gives me great happiness,” he replied, with the faintest tremor in his tone.

It might have been that sign of agitation which made her look at him suddenly.

His gaze sank. But he felt her eyes upon his face, and the eager, restless scrutiny that filled them.

But if ever a memory of something infinitely beloved to her had been renewed by his reply, it melted upon her conviction of the death of him whom Holdsworth’s voice had recalled to her, as snow upon water.

Could it have been otherwise?

Not five years—not twenty years—not a lifetime, maybe, of ordinary sufferings could have so transformed his face but that her love could have pierced the mask.

But the unnatural misery of those ten days in the open boat—the hunger that had wasted, the agonising thirst that had twisted his face out of all likeness to what it had been, the growth of beard and moustache that hid the lower part of the countenance, the gray hair, the bare forehead, the deformed eyebrows, the rugged indent between the brows, the stooped form!—

Here was a transformation that would have defied a mother’s instincts—that would have offered an impenetrable front to perception barbed into keenness by the profoundest love that ever warmed the heart.

And yet, looking at this woman attentively—looking at her gazing at yonder man, cowering, it might almost seem, in the friendly shadow of the wall—there was something in her eyes, something in her face, something in her whole manner, that would have quickened your pulse with a moment of breathless suspense.

In such matters, as in the loss of memory, we must recognise the existence of a deep spiritual insight having no reference to the revelations of the mind. There are convictions which do not satisfy, though cemented by logic and acted on by their possessor with sincere conscience. Against such convictions instincts will surge as waves break upon a shore. Echoes are awakened, but are thought purposeless. And the conviction is still maintained, while the secret truth rolls at its base.

The voice of Holdsworth, but not his face, had set Dolly’s instincts in motion.

But then her conviction that Holdsworth was dead was a permanent one; and under it her instincts subsided into uneasy sleep, though there was a shadow of melancholy on her face when she removed her eyes, which had not been there before Holdsworth spoke.

“I hope Nelly has been good, Mr. Hampden.”

“Very good, indeed.”

He seemed to know that the crisis was passed, for he breathed more freely, looked at her, and removed his hand from the chair.

“These toys are very beautiful. I really feel unable to express my gratitude to you.”

“You owe me no thanks. My gratitude is due to you for allowing your sweet little girl to come and see me.”

“Mrs. Parrot tells me you are very fond of children?”

“Very. I hope little Nelly will often be here. I am quite alone, and she cheers me with her pretty prattle.”

She glanced at him quickly and sympathetically, as he said he was alone, and sighed.

Holdsworth noticed that her dress was very shabby; but her beauty lost nothing by her apparel. He thought her looking sweeter than when he had left her five years before. Her riper charms were made touching by an under colouring of sadness, and there was languor in her movements and speech—sign of heart-weariness.

“It is time for us to get home, Nelly,” she said, looking uneasily towards the window. “Go and give Mr. Hampden a kiss, and thank him prettily for his beautiful presents.”

The child approached Holdsworth, who kissed her gently, repressing the passionate emotion that, had he been alone, would have prompted him to raise her in his arms and press her to his breast.

“Here are some little cakes,” he said, taking the parcel Mrs. Parrot had prepared, and giving them to the child, but addressing Dolly, “which will amuse her to play with. When may she come again, Mrs. Conway?”

“Oh, she must not intrude ...”

“No, no! she cannot come too often. Pray let me make a companion of her. She has completely won my heart. May she not walk with me sometimes? I promise to take as much care of her as if she were my own child.”

He had advanced a step and spoke eagerly, bending forward; but meeting her full eyes fixed on him with a little frown of mingled fear and amazement, he turned pale, fell back a step, and forcing a smile, said hurriedly:

“I am sometimes—sometimes laughed at for—for my love of children.”

She did not answer him for some moments, but stood watching him with a startled expression, suggesting both fascination and terror. Then she averted her eyes slowly, the colour went out of her cheeks, and she murmured something under her breath.

“You remind me of one who was very dear to me ... I beg your pardon ... there is often a strange resemblance in the tones of voices.”

She took the child’s hand, and was mechanically walking to the door.

“Me want dolly and horse,” said Nelly, holding back.

Holdsworth picked up the toys, and went into the passage to open the door. They bowed to each other, and Holdsworth returned to the sitting-room.

The moment he had dreaded had come and was gone. He had met his wife, spoken with her, and she did not know him.

He had noticed the sudden surprise and fear that had come into her face; he had noticed the deeply thoughtful mood in which she had quitted the house. But these things proved no more than this: that a note, familiar to her ear, still lived in the tones of his voice, and had aroused for awhile the memory which rarely disturbed her now, save in dreams at night.

Well! what he wished had happened. Suffering had deformed him, time had changed him, to some purpose. He could play the game of life anew, as one freshly come upon the stage. His paradise was closed to him, but he could stand at the gate and be a looker-on at the sphere in which his most sacred interests played their parts; he could respect and uphold, by his withdrawal and secrecy, her, whose vows to him his imagined death had cancelled; he could have his child for a playmate, and sow in her heart those seeds of love, which, if God should ever suffer her to know her father, would, in the fulness of time, bless him with an abundant harvest of happiness.

But, though he would not, for the worth of his life, have had things otherwise than they were, yet, as he stood in the room from which the light had departed with his child’s sweet face, the tears rose to his eyes and sobs convulsed him.

Oh, it was hard to look back upon his sufferings, and feel that nothing but suffering yet remained; hard and bitter to behold those whom he loved, those whose love would spring to meet him were he to make but one little sign, and to know that he was as dead to them as if the great desolate sea rolled over his body.

But here was a noble self-sacrificing heart that could not long mourn its own afflictions. High virtues are always pregnant with high consolations, and a good man’s grief for himself is short because he carries many tender ministers to it in his bosom. There was no triumph now to complete, for his conquest over impulse had been achieved at Southbourne. He drew to the open window at the back, where the air was fragrant with the smell of hay from the meadows beyond, and the cool evening perfumes of flowers hidden amid the shrubbery in the garden, and watched the sun sinking, whilst his thoughts followed it to the distant deep, whose breast it overhung, and on whose lonely surface he had watched it rising and setting with a despair the memory of which filled him with thoughts too deep for tears.