fter this I encountered her on the cliff one afternoon with her
little girl. The child and I had met once or twice before in the hall;
and her recognition of me led to a little friendly talk between me and
the mother. She was a fragile delicate-looking woman, who had once been
very pretty, but whose beauty had for the most part been worn away,
either by ill-health or trouble. She was very young, five-and-twenty at
the utmost. She told me that the little girl was her only child, and that
her husband was away from England, but that she expected his return
before long.

"After this we met almost every afternoon; and I began to look out for
these meetings, and our quiet talk upon the solitary cliff, as the
pleasantest part of my day. There was a winning grace about this Mrs.
Nowell's manner that I had never seen in any other woman; and I grew to
be more interested in her than I cared to confess to myself. It matters
little now; and I may freely own how weak I was in those days.

"I could see that she was very ill, and I did not need the ominous hints
of the landlady, who had contrived to question Mrs. Nowell's doctor, to
inspire me with the dread that she might never recover. I thought of her
a great deal, and watched the fading light in her eyes, and listened to
the weakening tones of her voice, with a sense of trouble that seemed
utterly disproportionate to the occasion. I will not say that I loved
her; neither the fact that she was another man's wife, nor the fact that
she was soon to die, was ever absent from my mind when I thought of her.
I will only say that she was more to me than any woman had ever been
before, or has ever been since. It was the one sentimental episode of my
life, and a very brief one.

"The weeks went by, and her husband did not come. I think the trouble and
anxiety caused by his delay did a good deal towards hastening the
inevitable end; but she bore her grief very quietly, and never uttered a
complaint of him in my hearing. She paid her way regularly enough for a
considerable time, and then all at once broke down, and confessed to the
landlady that she had not a shilling more in the world. The woman was a
hard creature, and told her that if that was the case, she must find some
other lodgings, and immediately. I heard this, not from Mrs. Nowell, but
from the landlady, who seemed to consider her conduct thoroughly
justified by the highest code of morals. She was a lone unprotected
woman, and how