"Who could have had an interest in doing me this cruel wrong?" asked the
mother.

"One whom you know well--Mr. John Somerville."

"Surely you are wrong!" exclaimed Mrs. Clifton, in unbounded
astonishment. "That cannot be. What object could he have?"

"Can you think of none?" queried Peg, looking at her shrewdly.

Mrs. Clifton changed color.

"Perhaps so," she said. "Go on."

Peg told the whole story, so circumstantially that there was no room for
doubt.

"I did not believe him capable of such great wickedness," ejaculated
Mrs. Clifton, with a pained and indignant look. "It was a base, unmanly
revenge to take. How could you lend yourself to it?"

"How could I?" repeated Peg. "Madam, you are rich. You have always had
whatever wealth could procure. How can such as you understand the
temptations of the poor? When want and hunger stare us in the face we
have not the strength that you have in your luxurious homes."

"Pardon me," said Mrs. Clifton, touched by these words, half bitter,
half pathetic. "Let me, at any rate, thank you for the service you have
done me now. When you are released from your confinement come to me. If
you wish to change your mode of life, and live honestly henceforth, I
will give you the chance."

"After all the injury I have done you, you are yet willing to trust me?"

"Who am I that I should condemn you? Yes, I will trust you, and forgive
you."

"I never expected to hear such words," said Peg, her heart softened, and
her arid eyes moistened by unwonted emotion; "least of all from you. I
should like to ask one thing."

"What is it?"

"Will you let her come and see me sometimes?" pointing to Ida as she
spoke. "It will remind me that this is not all a dream--these words
which you have spoken."

"She shall come," said Mrs. Clifton, "and I will come too, sometimes."

"Thank you."

They left the prison behind them, and returned home.

There was a visitor awaiting them.

"Mr. Somerville is in the drawing room," said the servant. "He said he
would wait till you came in."

Mrs. Clifton's face flushed.

"I will go down and see him," she said. "Ida, you will remain here."

She descended to the drawing room, and met the man who had injured her.
He had come with the resolve to stake his all upon one desperate cast.
His fortunes were desperate. But he had one hope left. Through the
mother's love for the daughter, whom she had mourned so long, whom as he
believed he had it in his powe