my good woman," she said mechanically, by
way of opening the case, as she opened all
cases that came before her in that stone
parlour, as the delegated Lady Bountiful of
Chedbury. "What can I do for you?"

There was no rejoinder.

"My time, to-day," she went on, in the same
gentle yet rather magisterial tone, "happens
to be rather valuable."

"I am sorry," replied the stranger, "to
have to trespass upon it." Mrs. Moreton,
struck by something peculiar in the woman's
tone, looked up; for the first time became
conscious of those eyes—earnest, imploring,
sad with an unspoken history—that were
fastened upon her own, and said, with much
less of state and more of gentleness than she
had yet shown, "You seem to be in some
trouble. Can I do anything to help you?"

"You can—you, and no one else in this
world can."

"I?—surely we have never met before,"
replied Mrs. Moreton, feeling by the woman's
manner that hers was no case of every-day
appeal for charity. "Pray tell me your
name."

The woman was silent, and her lips seemed
to be slightly convulsed. At length, with a
violent effort to conceal a strong emotion, she
answered, "It is one that you have heard—
it is, or was, for I now bear it no longer,
Elizabeth Garton."

Mrs. Moreton's face had been lighted up
with a kindly interest; but a shade, like the
sudden falling of a curtain, now dropped
across it, and shut out the sympathy she had
begun to manifest. She rose, and said coldly,
"In that case I am not aware of any matter
in which I am likely to be able to serve you.
I must refer you to Mr. Andrews, my lord's
agent; he being the person with whom it
will probably be most fitting for you to
communicate." She then moved towards the
door; but her effort to leave the room was
vain. The visitor, like the old mariner in
the weird story, held her with her eye.
Before she could reach the door she tried
to pass this strange, sad woman, and could not.
"Listen to me, madam," exclaimed the
visitor, "and then you will not mistake my
errand. It is not Lord Chedbury; not his
agent; not anything either of them could
give me, if it were this great house itself,
that I want. It is you—you only, that can
help me, and you will help me—you must."
She spoke these words almost authoritatively;
yet, checking herself, went on in a
tone of deep and touching submission. "You
are a good lady, Mrs. Moreton; you have
every one's good word. You will not make
yourself hard against the supplication of a
broken heart—God himself has promised to
listen to it."

Mrs. Moreton trembled. She was indeed
a woman of this world, but with much
tenderness and large sympathies. "I do not
feel harshly towards you—forgive me if I
appeared harsh—but your coming here took
me by surprise. Lord Chedbury's orders are
exceedingly strict respecting you; and I
understood that you were settled comfortably
in your own station in life, far above any
kind of want."

"I am settled comfortably," returned the
woman; "above want—above my hopes. I
have a kind husband, a home, and children.
Every one is good to me. No one casts up
my fault to me. No one, I think,
remembers it now, except myself, when, upon
my knees, I ask God to forgive me that, and
all my other sins. That I had ever known
Chedbury, or seen Lord Robert —he was
Lord Robert then—would have sunk into the
past long before this,like a dream—
except for one thing—O! Mrs. Moreton, my
daughter! Her, too, I had put from me, as
much as a mother can forget her child; but
since I heard you were all going beyond
seas—perhaps for ever—I know not what it
is that has come over me; something that
will not let me rest, day nor night—it is a
fire in my heart. Have pity upon me. I do
not ask to speak to her—not to say nor to
hear one word. She need not know that it
is her mother—need not know that there is
such a person in the whole world. All I ask
is to see her—only to see her—my daughter,
only to see my daughter."

Mrs. Moreton was deeply agitated. "It is
impossible, and it is cruel in you," she said,
"to ask it—cruel to yourself, cruel to me,
trusted as I am by Lord Chedbury; cruel,
most of all, to her. You know under what
strict conditions his lordship brought home
his daughter, so soon as the death of the old
lord, his father, made this house his own.
You know, too, that these conditions, hard
as they might seem, were dictated by no
personal unkindness towards yourself; but grew
out of your daughter's altered position, and
a sense of what is due to the station she
will one day occupy. She has been trained
carefully in all the ideas that befit a young
gentlewoman of rank. She has as yet seen
little of the world, and knows nothing of
its evil. She left you at three years old
not more innocent than she still is, now."
Mrs. Moreton paused a moment and went
on with emotion, "That opening life—that
young unsullied mind, what should I—what
would you—have to answer for if we darkened
it by a shadow of bygone misery and evil in
which she had no share? She has been
taught to believe her mother dead. My poor
woman," she went on solemnly, "you must be
dead to her. A day will come, not in this world,
when you may claim her for your own."

"I must see my child now, that I may
know her in Heaven," exclaimed the woman
wildly. "I must see her, that she may
comfort me in my thoughts, and be near
me in my dreams. Do you," she exclaimed,
suddenly, "who talk to me so wisely,
know what I, the mother of a first-born child,