ould shrink from any human creature!" he answered,
earnestly. "Who among us has a right to do that?"

She hardly dared trust herself to believe him. "You would still pity
her?" she persisted, "and still feel for her?"

"With all my heart."

"Oh, how good you are!"

He held up his hand in warning. The tones of his voice deepened, the
luster of his eyes brightened. She had stirred in the depths of that
great heart the faith in which the man lived--the steady principle which
guided his modest and noble life.

"No!" he cried. "Don't say that! Say that I try to love my neighbor as
myself. Who but a Pharisee can believe that he is better than another?
The best among us to-day may, but for the mercy of God, be the worst
among us tomorrow. The true Christian virtue is the virtue which never
despairs of a fellow-creature. The true Christian faith believes in Man
as well as in God. Frail and fallen as we are, we can rise on the wings
of repentance from earth to heaven. Humanity is sacred. Humanity has its
immortal destiny. Who shall dare say to man or woman, 'There is no hope
in you?' Who shall dare say the work is all vile, when that work bears
on it the stamp of the Creator's hand?"

He turned away for a moment, struggling with the emotion which she had
roused in him.

Her eyes, as they followed him, lighted with a momentary
enthusiasm--then sank wearily in the vain regret which comes too late.
Ah! if he could have been her friend and her adviser on the fatal day
when she first turned her steps toward Mablethorpe House! She sighed
bitterly as the hopeless aspiration wrung her heart. He heard the sigh;
and, turning again, looked at her with a new interest in his face.

"Miss Roseberry," he said.

She was still absorbed in the bitter memories of the past: she failed to
hear him.

"Miss Roseberry," he repeated, approaching her.

She looked up at him with a start.

"May I venture to ask you something?" he said, gently.

She shrank at the question.

"Don't suppose I am speaking out of mere curiosity," he went on.
"And pray don't answer me unless you can answer without betraying any
confidence which may have been placed in you."

"Confidence!" she repeated. "What confidence do you mean?"

"It has just struck me that you might have felt more than a common
interest in the questions which you put to me a moment since," he
answered. "Were you by any chance speaking of some unhappy woman--not
the person who frightened