"Then, sir," said Mrs. Mallet, "if you'll only not look so frightened, I'll tell you how it was. It is now twenty years ago that I was very unfortunate. I was not more than thirty years of age, but I was old enough to have just lost a good husband and a dear little babe; and then, when I hadn't a sixpence in my pocket, I caught the fever, and had to go to a hospital. I wasn't used to trouble; for although I was nothing better than a poor man's child, I had known all my life nothing but kindness. I never had but one mistress,--my lady, who when she was the most beautiful young lady in all Devonshire, took me out of a village school, and raised me to be her maid; and her maid I was for twelve years--first down in Devonshire, and afterwards up in London, when she married (somewhat against the will of her family) a thorough good gentleman, but a poor one, who after a time took her out to India, where he became a judge, and she a grand lady. My dear mistress would have taken me out to India with her, only she was then too poor to pay for my passage out, and bear the expense of me there, where labour can be got so cheap, and native servants can live on a handful of rice a day. She, sir, is Lady Burridge--the same who gave me the money to start in this house with, and whose carriage you saw yesterday at my door. "So my mistress went eastward, and I was left behind to marry a young man I had loved for some few years, and who had served during that time as clerk to my lady's husband. I was a young woman, and young women, to the end of the chapter, will think it a brave thing to fall in love. I thought my sweetheart was a handsomer and cleverer man than any other of his station in all London. I wonder how many girls have thought the same of their favourites! I went to church one morning with a fluttering heart and trembling knees, and came out under the porch thinking that all my life would ever afterwards be brighter, and lighter, and sunnier than it had been before. Well! in dancing into that pretty blunder, I wasn't a bigger fool than lots of others. "And if a good husband is a great blessing (and she must be a paltry woman who can say nay to that), I was born to luck; for my husband was kind, good, and true--his temper was as sweet at home as his manners were abroad--he was hard-working and clever, sober and devout; and--though you may laugh at a woman of my age talking so like a romance--I tell you, sir, that if my life had to come all over again, I'd rather have the mischance of marrying my dear Richard, that the good fortune of wedding a luckier man.