if there is anything good in me, it doesn't
show itself on the surface. Yes! yes! I believe you are beginning to
understand me. If I can make your life here a little happier, as time
goes on, I shall be only too glad to do it." She put her long yellow
hands on either side of Carmina's head, and kissed her forehead.

The poor child threw her arms round Miss Minerva's neck, and cried
her heart out on the bosom of the woman who was deceiving her. "I have
nobody left, now Teresa has gone," she said. "Oh, do try to be kind to
me--I feel so friendless and so lonely!"

Miss Minerva neither moved nor spoke. She waited, and let the girl cry.

Her heavy black eyebrows gathered into a frown; her sallow face deepened
in colour. She was in a state of rebellion against herself. Through all
the hardening influences of the woman's life--through the fortifications
against good which watchful evil builds in human hearts--that innocent
outburst of trust and grief had broken its way; and had purified for a
while the fetid inner darkness with divine light. She had entered the
room, with her own base interests to serve. In her small sordid way she,
like her employer, was persecuted by debts--miserable debts to sellers
of expensive washes, which might render her ugly complexion more
passable in Ovid's eyes; to makers of costly gloves, which might show
Ovid the shape of her hands, and hide their colour; to skilled workmen
in fine leather, who could tempt Ovid to look at her high instep, and
her fine ankle--the only beauties that she could reveal to the only
man whom she cared to please. For the time, those importunate creditors
ceased to threaten her. For the time, what she had heard in the
conservatory, while they were reading the Will, lost its tempting
influence. She remained in the room for half an hour more--and she left
it without having borrowed a farthing.

"Are you easier now?"

"Yes, dear."

Carmina dried her eyes, and looked shyly at Miss Minerva. "I have been
treating you as if I had a sister," she said; "you don't think me too
familiar, I hope?"

"I wish I was your sister, God knows!"

The words were hardly out of her mouth before she was startled by her
own fervour. "Shall I tell you what to do with Mrs. Gallilee?" she said
abruptly. "Write her a little note."

"Yes! yes! and you will take it for me?"

Carmina's eyes brightened through her tears, the suggestion was such a
relief! In a minute the note was written: "My