mark as that. Have you got your pocket-book, Amelius? In
case we are separated at some later time, I want to write the name and
address in it of a person whom we can trust. I persist, you see, in
providing for the future. There's the one chance in a hundred that my
dream may come true--and you have so many years before you, and so many
girls to meet with in that time!"

She handed back the pocket-book, which Amelius had given to her, after
having inscribed a man's name and address on one of the blank leaves.

"He was my father's lawyer," she explained; "and he and his son are both
men to be trusted. Suppose I am ill, for instance--no, that's absurd; I
never had a day's illness in my life. Suppose I am dead (killed perhaps
by some accident, or perhaps by my own hand), the lawyers have my
written instructions, in the case of my child being found. Then again--I
am such an unaccountable woman--I may go away somewhere, all by myself.
Never mind! The lawyers shall have my address, and my positive orders
(though they keep it a secret from all the world besides) to tell it to
you. I don't ask your pardon, Amelius, for troubling you. The chances
are so terribly against me; it is all but impossible that I shall ever
see you--as I saw you in my dream--coming into the room, leading my girl
by the hand. Odd, isn't it? This is how I veer about between hope and
despair. Well, it may amuse you to remember it, one of these days. Years
hence, when I am at rest in mother earth, and when you are a middle aged
married man, you may tell your wife how strangely you once became the
forlorn hope of the most wretched woman that ever lived--and you may say
to each other, as you sit by your snug fireside, 'Perhaps that poor lost
daughter is still living somewhere, and wondering who her mother was.'
No! I won't let you see the tears in my eyes again--I'll let you go at
last."

She led the way to the door--a creature to be pitied, if ever there was
a pitiable creature yet: a woman whose whole nature was maternal, who
was nothing if not a mother; and who had lived through sixteen years of
barren life, in the hopeless anticipation of recovering her lost child!

"Goodbye, and thank you," she said. "I want to be left by myself, my
dear, with that little frock and cap which you found out in spite of me.
Go, and tell my niece it's all right--and don't be stupid enough to fall
in love with a girl who has no love to give you in return." She pushed
Ameliu