‘Well, Mr Charles, I suppose I shall see you back again here before long?’ screamed the shrill voice of Mrs Vere down the staircase. I started. _See me back!_ Was it possible that this woman believed I intended to make friends with her? ‘We’ve been parted long enough, it strikes me,’ she continued; ‘and now your father’s gone, and left no one behind him but yourself, I suppose you’ll be looking out for my share of the property at my death, so we may as well let bye-gones be bye-gones—eh?’ ‘I wish for none of your property, madam,’ I answered haughtily, ‘since the law gives it to you you are welcome to keep it.’ ‘Charlie, dear, think what you may be resigning,’ urged my mother in my ear. ‘I think of nothing but _you_, mother!’ ‘Hoity, toity! here’s manners,’ cried the other woman. ‘You seem to forget, Master Charlie, that _I’m your mother_!’ Still holding my mother’s hand, I turned and confronted her. ‘I forget nothing, madam! I wish I could; but I remember that _here_ stands the woman who laboured where you refused to work; who loved, where you had insulted and betrayed; who was faithful where you were faithless and undeserving; and, I say, that here stands my dead father’s true wife; and here stands, in God’s sight, _my mother_! The blessing of man may not have sanctified her union, but the blessing of heaven shall be upon it and upon her—upon the creatures she rescued from a living death and upon the gracious hand with which she did it, until time itself shall be no more.’ So saying, I passed with _my mother_ beyond the gates of Lilyfields, to make a new life for her in some quiet spot where she might outlive her grief, and to repay, if possible, by the protection and support of my manhood, the love she had given me as a little child. THE END. [Illustration] IN THE HEART OF THE ARDENNES. Fever is raging in Brussels, and we are advised to quit the town as soon as possible. The question is, where to go. I suggest Rochefort in the Ardennes, having ascertained previously that the place is healthy; but my friends laugh at me. ‘Rochefort in February! We shall all be frozen to death.’ ‘At least,’ I argue, ‘there is pure air to breathe.’ ‘But you can have no idea of the dulness,’ is all the reply I receive; ‘Rochefort, with its one street and its one resident is bad enough in the summer, but at this season it will be unendurable.’ Yet I am not to be turned from my purpose. I consider it is better to be frozen outwardly than burned inwardly; and that when one is flying from a pestilence, there is no time to regret the numerous pleasures left behind, or the few that loom in the future. And so we settle finally that, notwithstanding its promised disadvantages, we will thankfully accept the refuge Rochefort can afford us; and having made up our minds to go, we start twenty-four hours afterwards.