“I am very glad to see you, Aunt Anne,” Florence answered simply. “Are you quite well, and are you staying in London?—But you are in deep mourning; I hope you have not had any very sad loss?” The tears came into the poor old lady’s eyes. “My dear,” she said still more tremulously than before, “you are evidently not aware of my great bereavement; but I might have known that, for if you had been you would have written to me. Florence, I am a widow; I am alone in the world.” Mrs. Hibbert put her hands softly on Aunt Anne’s and kissed her. “I didn’t know, I had no idea, and Walter had not——” “I knew it. Don’t think that I have wronged either you or him. I knew that you were ignorant of all that had happened to me or you would have written to express your sympathy, though, if you had, I might not even have received your letter, for I have been homeless too,” Mrs. Baines said sadly. She stopped for a moment; then, watching Florence intently, she went on in a choking voice, “Mr. Baines has been dead more than eight months. He died as he had lived, my darling. He thought of you both three weeks before his death,” and her left eye winked. “It was very kind of him,” Florence said gratefully; “and you, dear Aunt Anne,” she asked gently, “are you staying in London for the present? Where are you living?” It seemed as if Aunt Anne gathered up all her strength to answer. “My dear, I am in London because I am destitute—destitute, Florence, and—and I have to work for my living.” Her niece was too much astonished to answer for a minute. “But, Aunt Anne,” she exclaimed, “how can you work? what can you have strength to do, you poor dear?” Aunt Anne hesitated a moment; she winked again in an absent unconscious manner, and then answered with great solemnity: “I have accepted a post at South Kensington as chaperon to a young married lady whose husband is abroad. She has a young sister staying with her, and her husband does not approve of their being alone without some older person to protect them.” “It is very brave of you to go out into the world now,” Florence said admiringly. “My dear, it would be most repugnant to me to be a burden to any one, even to those who love me best; that is why—why I did it, Florence.” “And are they kind to you? do they treat you quite properly?” Mrs. Hibbert inquired anxiously. The old lady drew herself up and answered severely: “I should not stay with them an hour if they ever forgot what was due to me. They treat me with the greatest respect.” “But why have you been obliged to do this, you poor Aunt Anne? Had Mr. Baines no money to leave you?” Aunt Anne’s mouth twitched as she heard the “Mr. Baines,” but Florence had never thought of him as anything else, and when the two last words slipped out she felt it would be better to go on and not to notice her mistake. “No, my love, at his death his income ceased; there was barely enough for immediate expenses, and then—and then I had to go out into the world.”