"Who can tell?" The words came from Andrew as he rose from his chair and went to a side-table. "I am going to write to Mrs. Penn through the papers." His mother and Elsie watched him as he opened a blotting-book and set about his task at once. There was something firm and business-like in his way of doing things. In a few minutes the notice was written, and he read it aloud to them:--"Mrs. Penn, formerly of -- Soho Square, is requested to communicate at once with Andrew Beaton, -- Wardour Street, W." "That will do," said Mrs. Beaton approvingly. Elsie, too, rose from her seat. The afternoon was wearing away, and Miss Saxon would be getting uneasy at her absence. "You will come again, my dear?" said the old lady, holding her hand in a lingering clasp. "I shall be very glad to come," Elsie answered. "It is so long since I have talked with any one so motherly as you are." As she spoke her lips quivered. They both knew that the loss of a mother leaves a void which can only be filled up in heaven, and perhaps the first treasure restored to us there will be the unspeakable gift of a mother's love. "I have never had a daughter," said Mrs. Beaton, with a slight trembling in her voice. "When Meta Neale came I sometimes caught a glimpse of what a daughter might be." The room was growing darker, but Elsie felt rather than saw the swift look of pain which swept across Andrew's face. She felt in her mind, magnetically, the feeling that was in his. It came to her all at once--that sudden, strange intuition which reveals to us the deep places in other people's lives. He, too, had caught a glimpse of what a daughter might have been to his mother. He had seen how lovely his life might have grown if he could have won Meta. But that vision had been sternly put away from him; neither in this life nor the next would she belong to him. It was worse than a loss, Elsie thought. It was "the devotion to something afar" from his own sphere--a longing for the light of a star that had never shone into his world at all. He was not grieving for a gift given and taken away, but for a treasure which had never for an instant come within his reach. She went away in the gathering dusk with a heart full of sympathy. Had the "vanished hand" guided her into the path of his solitary life that she might shed a ray of brightness there? Miss Saxon was waiting for her with an anxious face. Some people had called and left cards--friends who had lived once near her old neighbourhood. Elsie felt very little interest in them now; her mind was full of new feelings; she did not care to talk over bygone days. "I don't want to begin visiting," she said. "I am so busy, Miss Saxon! In this life of mine there is so much to do--is there not?" CHAPTER VII _MRS. PENN_ "I have a boy of five years old, His face is fair and fresh to see, His limbs are cast in beauty's mould, And dearly he loves me." --WORDSWORTH.