nt.

"I can do without my winter cloak, and my black merino dress will last
me for some weeks longer if I sponge it with cold tea, and re-line the
tail," she said to herself. "Any little privation is better than to
hurt the hearts of the orphan girls."

She paid the man, who signed the receipt, and then she let him out
herself. As she did so a young man came hastily up the steps--he had a
bright face, and running up to the governess, he seized both her hands
in his.

"Oh, Arthur, how glad I am to see you!" said Miss Egerton.

CHAPTER XXIX.

A BLESSING.

Miss Egerton took Arthur Noel--for it was he--straight back into her
little sitting-room, and sitting down on her worn little horse-hair
sofa, and raising her eyes anxiously to the young man's face, she told
him the story of the attic upstairs, of the furniture she had
purchased, of the girls she had meant to serve. She showed him, with
hands that trembled, the envelope with its queer inscription, and she
unfolded for his benefit the empty sheet of blank paper. She told her
story at once without any reservation, even relating with a little
hasty blush how she felt obliged to pay for the furniture herself.

Perhaps Arthur Noel was the only person in the world to whom she would
have made this confession; for she was one of those who made it a
practice never to let her right hand know what her left did, but she
had known Arthur from his boyhood, and he was one of those men who
inspire trust and sympathy at a glance.

He listened to the story with interest, and even excitement--he was
naturally enthusiastic, but even Miss Egerton had never seen him so
perturbed and so moved as he was at present.

"I know about those girls," he said at last; "what are their names?--I
am sure I know about them. Nay, let me ask you a question--Is not one
called Jasmine? Has she not a piquant face, and very soft and yet
bright eyes, and a great lot of curly brown hair? Yes, Miss Egerton, I
am sure the girls you speak of are in a certain sense _my_ girls; for
if they are the ones I mean I took them under my protection long ago."

"Their name is Mainwaring. My dear Arthur, where and how have you met
them? My dear boy, I fully believe, I have always believed, in your
good intentions, in your wish to do your utmost for every one; but if
you have really known Primrose, and Jasmine and Daisy, and have taken
them, as you say, under your protection, I must say that of late you
have