His age was so constantly in his mind now,
that he fancied it must be in her mind too. She
had never given it a thought. The reference he
had just made to it, did not divert her for a
moment from the subject on which she was
speaking to him.

"You don't know how I value your good
opinion of me," she said, struggling resolutely
to sustain her sinking courage. " How can I
deserve your kindness, how can I feel that I am
worthy of your regard, until I have opened my
heart to you? Oh, don't encourage me in my
own miserable weakness! Help me to tell the
truth—force me to tell it, for my own sake, if
not for your's!"

He was deeply moved by the fervent sincerity
of that appeal.

"You shall tell it," he said. " You are right
—and I was wrong." He waited a little, and
considered.  "Would it be easier to you," he
asked, with delicate consideration for her,
"to write it than to tell it?"

She caught eagerly at the suggestion. " Far
easier," she replied. "I can be sure of myself—
I can be sure of hiding nothing from you, if I
write it. Don't write to me, on your side,"
she added suddenly, seeing, with a woman's
instinctive quickness of penetration, the danger
of totally renouncing her personal influence over
him. " Wait till we meet; and tell me with
your own lips, what you think."

"Where shall I tell it?"

"Here," she said, eagerly. " Here, where
you found me helpless—here, where you have
brought me back to life, and where I have
first learnt to know you. I can bear the hardest
words you say to me, if you will only say them
in this room. It is impossible I can be away
longer than a month; a month will be enough,
and more than enough. If I come back—- "

She stopped confusedly. " I am thinking of
myself," she said, " when I ought to be thinking
of you. You have your own occupations,
and your own friends. Will you decide for us?
Will you say how it shall be?"

"It shall be as you wish. If you come back
in a month, you will find me here."

"Will it cause you no sacrifice of your own
comfort, and your own plans?"

"It will cause me nothing," he replied, " but
a journey back to the City." He rose and took
his hat. " I must go there at once," he added,
"or I shall not be in time."

"It is a promise between us?" she said—and
held out her hand.

"Yes," he answered, a little sadly. " It is a
promise."

Slight as it was, the shade of melancholy in
his manner pained her. Forgetting all other
anxieties in the anxiety to cheer him, she gently
pressed the hand he gave her. " If that won't
tell him the truth," she thought, " nothing will."

It failed to tell him the truth—but it forced
a question on his mind which he had not ventured
to ask himself before, " Is it her gratitude
or her love that is speaking to me?" he
wondered. "If I was only a younger man, I
might almost hope it was her love." That terrible
sum in subtraction, which had first presented
itself on the day when she told him her
age, began to trouble him again, as he left the
house. He took twenty from forty-one, at intervals,
all the way back to the shipowners'
office in Cornhill.

Left by herself, Magdalen approached the
table, to write the line of answer which Miss
Garth requested, and gratefully to accept the
proposal that had been made to her.

The second letter, which she had laid aside
and forgotten, was the first object that caught
her eye, on changing her place. She opened it
immediately, and not recognising the handwriting,
looked at the signature. To her unutterable
astonishment, her correspondent proved to be
no less a person than—old Mr. Clare!

The philosopher's letter dispensed with all
the ordinary forms of address, and entered on
its subject without prefatory phrases of any
kind, in these uncompromising terms:—

"I have more news for you of that contemptible
cur, my son. Here it is in the fewest possible
words.

"I always told you, if you remember, that
Frank was a Sneak. The very first trace recovered
of him, after his running away from his
employers in China, presents him in that character.
Where do you think he turns up next?
He turns up, hidden behind a couple of flour
barrels, on board an English vessel bound
homeward from Hong-Kong to London.

"The name of the ship was The Deliverance;
and the commander was one Captain Kirke.
Instead of acting like a sensible man, and
throwing Frank overboard, Captain Kirke was
fool enough to listen to his story. He made
the most of his misfortunes, you may be sure—
he was half starved; he was an Englishman lost
in a strange country, without a friend to help
him; his only chance of getting home was to
sneak into the hold of an English vessel—and
he had sneaked in, accordingly, at Hong-Kong,
two days since. That was his story. Any
other lout in Frank's situation, would have been
rope's-ended by any other captain. Deserving
no pity from anybody—Frank was, as a matter
of course, coddled and compassionated on the
spot. The captain took him by the hand, the
crew pitied him, and the passengers patted him
on the back. He was fed, clothed, and presented
with his passage home. Luck enough, so far,
you will say. Nothing of the sort; nothing
like luck enough for my despicable son.

"The ship touched at the Cape of Good Hope.
Among his other acts of folly, Captain Kirke
took a woman-passenger on board, at that place
—not a young woman, by any means—the
elderly widow of a rich colonist. Is it necessary
to say that she forthwith became deeply interested
in Frank and his misfortunes? Is it
necessary to tell you what followed? Look
back at my son's career; and you will see that
what followed was all of a piece with what went
before. He didn't deserve your poor father's