"A man going to market brought me up in his wagon. I fainted, and then he took me to his home. He lives close by, in the Horse and Groom Yard. His wife is bedridden, and such a good creature, and so kind to me. But they are poor, and I had no money, and I was afraid to be a burden to them; and besides--besides--" "Well?" "She saw that I was--she saw what was going to--being a woman, she knew I was soon--" "Yes, yes," said Hugh, stopping another flood of tears with a light touch of the hand. "How red your eyes look. Are they worse?" "The man was very good; he took me to the doctors at a hospital, and they said--oh, they said I might lose my sight!" "Poor little Mercy!" said Hugh. He was now ashamed of his own sufferings. How loud they had clamored awhile ago; yet, what were they side by side with this poor girl's tangible sorrows! Mere things of the air, with no reality. "But no matter!" she burst out. "That's no matter." "You must keep up heart, Mercy. I spoke angrily to you the other night, but it's over now, is it not?" "Oh, why didn't you leave me alone?" said the girl. "Hush, Mercy; it will be well with you yet." His own eyes were growing dim, but even then his heart was bitter. Had he not said in his wrath that passion was the demon of the world? He might say it in his sorrow, too. The simple heart of this girl loved him, even as his own lustier soul loved Greta. He had wronged her. But that was only a tithe of the trouble. If she could but return him hate for wrong, how soon everything would be right with her! "What brought you here, Mercy?" "One of the sisters--they visit the sick--one of them visited the house where they gave me lodgings, and I heard that they sometimes took homeless girls into the convent. And I thought I was homeless, now, and--and--" "Poor little woman!" "I came the night before last, but saw your brother Paul walking here in front. So I went away." "Paul?" "Then I came last night, and he was here again. So I went away once more, and to-night I came earlier, and he wasn't here, but just as I was going to ring the bell, and say that I had no home, and that my eyes were growing worse, something seemed to say they would ask if I had a father, and why I had left him; and then I couldn't ring--and then I thought if only I could die--yes, if only I could die and forget, and never wake up again in the morning--" "Hush, Mercy. You shall go back home to your father." "No, no, no!" "Yes; and I shall go with you." There was silence. The bleared eyes looked stealthily up into his face. A light smile played there. "Ah!" A bright vision came to her of a fair day when, hand in hand with him she loved, she should return to her forsaken home in the mountains, and hold up her head, and wipe away her father's tears. She was in the dark street of the city, then; she and her home were very far apart.