e
more in the false position of a woman too undecided to know her own
mind. Forced to choose between these alternatives, her true regard for
Bennydeck forbade her to think of herself, and encouraged her to wait
for him. As he came nearer, she saw anxiety in his face and observed an
open letter in his hand. He smiled as he approached her, and asked leave
to take a chair at her side. At the same time, when he perceived that
she had noticed his letter, he put it away hurriedly in his pocket.

"I hope nothing has happened to annoy you," she said.

He smiled again; and asked if she was thinking of his letter. "It is
only a report," he added, "from my second in command, whom I have left
in charge of my Home. He is an excellent man; but I am afraid his temper
is not proof against the ingratitude which we sometimes meet with. He
doesn't yet make allowances for what even the best natures suffer, under
the deteriorating influence of self-distrust and despair. No, I am
not anxious about the results of this case. I forget all my anxieties
(except one) when I am with you."

His eyes told her that he was about to return to the one subject that
she dreaded. She tried--as women will try, in the little emergencies of
their lives--to gain time.

"I am interested about your Home," she said: "I want to know what sort
of place it is. Is the discipline very severe?"

"There is no discipline," he answered warmly. "My one object is to be
a friend to my friendless fellow-creatures; and my one way of governing
them is to follow the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. Whatever
else I may remind them of, when they come to me, I am determined not
to remind them of a prison. For this reason--though I pity the hardened
wanderers of the streets, I don't open my doors to them. Many a refuge,
in which discipline is inevitable, is open to these poor sinners
already. My welcome is offered to penitents and sufferers of another
kind--who have fallen from positions in life, in which the sense of
honor has been cultivated; whose despair is associated with remembrances
which I may so encourage, with the New Testament to help me, as to
lead them back to the religious influences under which their purer
and happier lives may have been passed. Here and there I meet with
disappointments. But I persist in my system of trusting them as freely
as if they were my own children; and, for the most part, they justify my
confidence in them. On the day--if it ever come