The mother replied sharply, as if the child's strange words had irritated her.

"You are talking nonsense,' she said; and you must go to bed. Mr. Germaine knows nothing about us. Mr. Germaine is in England.'

I could restrain myself no longer. I called out under the window,

'Mr. Germaine is here!'

CHAPTER XIX.

LOVE AND PRIDE.

A CRY of terror from the room told me that I had been heard. For a moment more, nothing happened. Then the child's voice reached me, wild and shrill: 'Open the shutters, mamma! I said he was coming; I want to see him!'

There was still an interval of hesitation before the mother opened the shutters. She did it at last. I saw her darkly at the window, with the light behind her, and the child's head just visible above the lower part of the window-frame. The quaint little face moved rapidly up and down, as if my selfappointed daughter was dancing for joy!

'Can I trust my own senses?' said Mrs. Van Brandt. Is it really Mr. Germaine?'

6

'How do you do, new papa ?' cried the

6

child. Push open the big door-and come

in. I want to kiss you.'

There was a world of difference between the coldly-doubtful tone of the mother and the joyous greeting of the child. Had I forced myself too suddenly on Mrs. Van Brandt? Like all sensitively-organised persons, she possessed the inbred sense of selfrespect which is pride under another name. Was her pride wounded by the bare idea of my seeing her, deserted as well as deceived_ abandoned contemptuously, a helpless burden on strangers, by the man for whom she had sacrificed and suffered so much? And that man a thief, flying from the employers whom he had cheated! I pushed open the heavy oaken door, fearing that this might be the true explanation of the change which I had

already remarked in her. My apprehensions were confirmed, when she unlocked the inner-door leading from the court-yard to the sitting-room, and let me in.

As I took her by both hands and kissed her, she quickly turned her head, so that my lips touched her cheek only. She flushed deeply; her eyes were on the ground, as she expressed in a few formal words her surprise at seeing me. When the child flew to my arms, she cried out irritably, 'Don't trouble Mr. Germaine!' I took a chair with the little one on my knee. Mrs. Van Brandt seated herself at a distance from me. 'It is needless, I suppose, to ask if you know what has happened?' she said; turning pale again as suddenly as she had turned red, and keeping her eyes fixed obstinately on the floor.

Before I could answer, the child burst out gaily with the news of her father's disappearance:

other

My other papa has run away! My papa has stolen money! It's time I had a new one

isn't it?' She put her arms

6

round my neck. And now I've got him!' she cried, at the shrillest pitch of her voice. The mother looked at us. For a while, the proud sensitive woman struggled successfully with herself. But the pang that wrung her was not to be endured in silence. With a low cry of pain, she hid her face in her hands. Overwhelmed by the sense of her own degradation, she was even ashamed to let the man who loved her see that she was in tears.

I took the child off my knee. There was a second door in the sitting-room, which happened to be left open. It showed me a bedchamber within, and a candle burning on

the toilette-table.

'Go in there, and play,' I said.

I want

to talk to your mamma.'