Tea was laid, the one cup and saucer telling their pathetic tale of a lonely life. Margaret had left her lodgings that morning, desperate with the feeling that either her eyes and her senses must have some relief or her mind must give way. When she returned and looked round her once more, she began to fear that her experiment had been worse than useless. The force of contrast had increased the bitterness of her lot. She sank wearily into a stiff pretence of an arm-chair, and began again thinking out the problem that beauty and dreariness alike presented to her mind--the uncertain future. And then came over her like a flood the vision of days and years without hope, without joy. Burying her face in her hands, she gave way for a few moments to unrestrained weeping. It was an unwonted exercise, for Margaret was brave, and none of the last and deepest bitterness, that of remorse, cast its shadow on her retrospect of the past. Thoughtless she might have been, sinning she was not: of this thing the secret court of her inner consciousness, so pitiless to the true offender, had freely acquitted her. It would be a long story to tell what it was that overcame Margaret Grey till she sobbed out her sadness alone in the stillness of the May evening. Partly, perhaps, the squalor of her present surroundings, for the beautiful face and form encased a soul attuned to highest harmonies; partly the sweet womanly sympathy, which she had looked upon only and then put resolutely away from her; partly the daily pinpricks of disappointment and repulse that she had encountered in prosecuting the business which had led her to London. For, like a multitude of helpless women, Margaret was on the look-out for employment. She had one little girl, a child about six years of age. With such a sweet tie children-lovers might wonder at her utter desolation. Strange to say, this tie, so sweet to many, was to her more of a care than a pleasure. The future of her little one weighed heavily on her mind. In the lonely seaside village where she had left her it would be scarcely possible to educate her to fill the position that might be hers in the future. Margaret's scanty means did not allow her to think of a residence in town, or of the expenses of a school education for her daughter, unless, indeed, she could earn the necessary money. Hence her visit to London. She had been well educated herself; of course her first thought was that by educating others she could pay for the education of her child. If she had loved her little one very much, perhaps she would have judged differently. She might have thought it better to make a home for her child in any spot, however lonely, feeling that the lack of some accomplishment would be well compensated by the refining influence of a mother's constant love and care.