e, is gone? It is
enough to kill you--and you will not have money to live elsewhere."

The keen solicitude in voice and eyes could not be mistaken. It
was evident that he cared for what she might suffer--what might
ultimately become of her. The thought was rapture to her starved
and lonely heart.

"I must bear it," she said, trying to control her voice as well as
her face. "Life will be no harder to me there than elsewhere."

"You are wrong. In no other spot on earth will the loss of your
mother so oppress you. I know what that has been to you, by my
consciousness of what that possession was. And remember one thing,
which gives me some right to speak to you as I am doing now--I loved
your mother and she also loved me."

At these words and the tones that accompanied them Bettina's strength
gave way. She dropped back in the seat from which she had risen, and,
hiding her face in her hands, burst into tears.

She could not see the effect of her weeping on the man, who still
stood motionless and erect before her. She did not know that the
tears sprang into his eyes also, and that the whispered utterance of
her name was on his lips.

He heard it, however, though she did not, and the knowledge that he
had lost control of himself made him turn away and walk to the other
end of the room.

When he had stood there a few seconds, with his back turned, he heard
her voice, somewhat shaken, though with the accent of recovered
self-possession, saying, in a tone of summons,

"Lord Hurdly--"

An inward revolt sprung up at being so addressed by her. The name had
only sinister associations for him in any case, but to hear it from
Bettina's lips filled him with a sort of rage.

"Lord Hurdly," she said again, and this time her voice had gained in
steadiness, until it sounded mechanical and hard.

"I wish to express to you," she said, when he had drawn a little
nearer, "my thanks for your kind intentions concerning me. I can only
repeat, however, that my decision is quite fixed, and that I shall
carry out the plans I have made known to you. Do not urge me further.
Do not write to me. It will be useless. Let me go back to the life
from which you never should have taken me. You were mistaken in
me from the first, and I have been nothing but a trouble and a
hinderance to you. I am sorry. I ask you to forget it all if you can.
But, above all things, I ask, if you would really help me and serve
me in the one way in which I can be he