thel Maud Mary pursued
sympathetically. "You weren't worse than the rest of us. I saw her
every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she
was always so much the same--happy, you know, in her quiet way."

"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.

"Yes, she was happy," Ethel Maud Mary said simply. "She's that
disposition--contented, you know; and she was happy from the first;
but she was happier still from the time she had you to care for. I'd
read about ladies of that kind, Mr. Brock, but had not seen one
before. It's being good does it, I suppose. Do you know she'd not have
told a lie was it ever so, Mrs. Maclure wouldn't!"

"And she went away with that lady?" Arthur asked, after a pause.

"Yes, if you can call it going," Ethel Maud Mary replied; "for the
lady didn't ask her leave, but just rolled her up in wraps, and had
her carried down to the carriage and took her off. And that's all we
know about her. She's written me a letter I'd like to show you, and
sent me money, pretending she owed it, because I'd let her have her
attic too cheap. She sent the presents afterwards, but no address. The
lady came back once alone, and had the attic photographed, with
everything arranged just as Mrs. Maclure used to have it. And she
bought all the things in it that belonged to us, and had them and all
Mrs. Maclure's own things taken away to keep, she said. She sat a long
time in the attic, looking at it, just as if she was trying to imagine
what living in it was like, and she kept dabbing her eyes with a
little lace handkerchief, and then she got up and sighed and said,
'Poor Beth! poor Beth!' several times. She talked to me a lot about
Mrs. Maclure. She seemed to know all about me, and treated me as if
we'd been old friends. And she knew all about you too, and asked after
you kindly. She said Mrs. Maclure was going to be a great woman--a
great genius or something of that sort--and do a lot for the world;
and she wanted to know if you'd ever suspected it. I told her I
thought not. The two letters you wrote she took to give Mrs. Maclure,
so she'd get _them_ all right."

"And see the particular kind of fatuous ass I am set down clearly in
my own handwriting!" he said to himself.

Then he rose. "I'll just go up and look at the attics," he said.

Ethel Maud Mary waited below, and waited long for him. When at last he
came down, he shook hands with her, but without looking at her.

"I'm going to find that