o be necessary to let the Doctor know
that Mr. Peacocke would be back almost at once, and took this means of
doing so. "In a week!" said Mrs. Wortle, as though painfully surprised by
the suddenness of the coming arrival.

"In a week or ten days. He was to follow his letter as quickly as
possible from San Francisco."

"And he has found it all out?"

"Yes; he has learned everything, I think. Look at this!" And Mrs.
Peacocke handed to her friend the photograph of the tombstone.

"Dear me!" said Mrs. Wortle. "Ferdinand Lefroy! And this was his grave?"

"That is his grave," said Mrs. Peacocke, turning her face away.

"It is very sad; very sad indeed;--but you had to learn it, you know."

"It will not be sad for him, I hope," said Mrs. Peacocke. "In all this, I
endeavour to think of him rather than of myself. When I am forced to
think of myself, it seems to me that my life has been so blighted and
destroyed that it must be indifferent what happens to me now. What has
happened to me has been so bad that I can hardly be injured further. But
if there can be a good time coming for him,--something at least of relief,
something perhaps of comfort,--then I shall be satisfied."

"Why should there not be comfort for you both?"

"I am almost as dead to hope as I am to shame. Some year or two ago I
should have thought it impossible to bear the eyes of people looking at
me, as though my life had been sinful and impure. I seem now to care
nothing for all that. I can look them back again with bold eyes and a
brazen face, and tell them that their hardness is at any rate as bad as my
impurity."

"We have not looked at you like that," said Mrs. Wortle.

"No; and therefore I send to you in my trouble, and tell you all this.
The strangest thing of all to me is that I should have come across one man
so generous as your husband, and one woman so soft-hearted as yourself."
There was nothing further to be said then. Mrs. Wortle was instructed to
tell her husband that Mr. Peacocke was to be expected in a week or ten
days, and then hurried back to give what assistance she could in the much
more important difficulties of her own daughter.

Of course they were much more important to her. Was her girl to become
the wife of a young lord,--to be a future countess? Was she destined to
be the mother-in-law of an earl? Of course this was much more important
to her. And then through it all,--being as she was a dear, good,
Christ