“Oh, Fan, I can't help it,” she said, half sobbing. “You have just his eyes, and it brings it all back when I look into them. It was wicked of me to go wrong, for I was brought up good and honest in the country; but he was a gentleman, and kind and good to me, and not a working-man and a drunken brute like poor Joe. But I sha'n't ever see him again. I don't know where he is, and he wouldn't know me if he saw me; and perhaps he's dead now. I loved him and he loved me, but we couldn't marry because he was a gentleman and me only a servant-girl, and I think he had a wife. But I didn't care, because he was good to me and loved me, and he gave me a hundred pounds to get married, and I can't ever tell you his name, Fan, because I promised never to name him to anyone, and kissed the Book on it when he gave me the hundred pounds, and it would be wicked to tell now. And Joe, he wanted to marry me; he knew it all, and took the hundred pounds and said it would make no difference. He'd love you just the same, he said, and never throw it up to me; and that's why I married Joe. Oh, what a fool I was, to be sure! But it can't be helped now, and it's no use saying more about it. Now go to bed, Fan, and forget all I've said to you.” Fan rose and went sorrowfully to her bed; but she did not forget, or try to forget, what she had heard. It was sad to lose that hope of ever seeing her father, but it was a secret joy to know that he had been kind and loving to her poor mother, and that he was a gentleman, and not one like Joe Harrod; that thought kept her awake in her cold bed for a long time--long after Joe and his wife were peacefully sleeping side by side. CHAPTER II That troubled evening was followed by a quiet period, lasting from Wednesday to Saturday, during which there were no brawls indoors, and Fan was free of the hateful task of going out to collect pence in the streets. Joe had been offered a three or four days' job; he had accepted it gratefully because it was only for three or four days, and for that period he would be the sober, stolid, British workman. The pleasures of the pot-house would claim him on Saturday, when he would have money in his pockets and the appetite that comes from abstention. On Saturday morning after he had left the house at six o'clock, Fan started up from her cot and came to her mother's side at the table. “Mother, may I go out to the fields to-day?” she asked. “I know if I go straight along the Edgware Road I'll come to them soon. And I'll be home early.” “No, Fan, don't you try it. It's too far and'll tire you, and you'd be hungry and maybe get lost.” “Can't I take some bread, mother? Do let me go! It will be so nice to see the fields and trees, and they say it isn't far to walk.” “You're not fit to be seen walking, Fan. Wait till you've got proper shoes to your feet, and a dress to wear. Perhaps I'll git you one next week.”