le you
can stay here.'

'I must, I will. You are truly kind, but I shall not leave my home till
I must. I have my own little room, and I am not quite alone. Walter is
up-stairs.'

Mrs. Fordyce saw that she was firm. She looked at her in wonder, noting
with practised eyes the neat refinement of her poor dress, her sweet
grace and delicate beauty. To find a creature so fair in such a place
was like coming suddenly on a pure flower blooming in a stony street.

'Your position is very lonely, but you will not find yourself without
friends. We must respect your wish to remain here, though the thought
will make me unhappy to-night,' said the kind woman. 'You will promise
to come to us immediately all is over?'

'If you still wish it; only there is poor Walter. It will be so dreadful
for me to leave him quite alone.'

Mrs. Fordyce could not restrain a smile. The child-heart still dwelt in
Gladys, though she was almost a woman grown.

'Ah, my dear, you know nothing of the world. It is like reading a fairy
story to look at you and hear you speak. I hope--I hope the world will
not spoil you.'

'Why should it spoil me? I can never know it except from you,' she said
simply.

Mrs. Fordyce looked round the large, dimly-lighted place with eyes in
which a wonder of pity lay.

'My child, is it possible that you have lived here almost two years, as
my husband tells me, with no companion but an old man and a working
lad?'

'I have been quite happy,' Gladys replied, with a slight touch of
dignity not lost upon the lawyer's wife.

'Perhaps because you knew nothing else. We will show you what life can
hold for such as you,' she answered kindly; and there came a day when
Gladys reminded her of these words in the bitterness of a wounded heart.

When her visitor left, Gladys ran up-stairs to Walter. They had so long
depended on each other for solace and sympathy, that it seemed the most
natural thing in the world for her to share this new experience with
him.

'You heard the lady speaking, did you not, Walter?' she asked
breathlessly. 'It was Mr. Fordyce's wife; she is so beautiful and so
kind. Just think, she would have taken me away with her in her
carriage.'

'And why didn't you go?' asked Walter in a dull, even voice, and without
appearing in the least interested.

'Oh because I could not leave just now,' she said slowly, quite
conscious of a change in his voice and look.

'But you will go, I suppose, after?'

'I sup