Fan followed her up the kitchen stairs to the hall, where Miss Starbrow, with her hat on as she had come in, stood waiting to see her. She looked keenly at the girl's flushed and tearful face, and turned to Rosie for an explanation; but that lively damsel, foreseeing storms, had already vanished up the stairs. “Has she been teasing you?” said the lady. “Well, never mind, don't think any more about it. She's an impudent hussy, I know--they all are, and one has to put up with them. Now sit down here and tell me your name, and where you live, and all about yourself, and why you go out cleaning steps for a living.” Then she also sat down and listened patiently, aiding with an occasional question, while the girl in a timid, hesitating way related the principal events in her unhappy life. “Poor girl!” was Miss Starbrow's comment when the narrative was finished. She had drawn off her glove and now took Fan's hand in hers. “How can you do that hard rough work with such poor thin little hands?” she said. “Let me look at your eyes again--it is so strange that you should have such eyes! You don't seem like a child of such people as your parents were.” Fan glanced timidly at her again, her eyes brightening, a red colour flushing her pale cheeks, and her lips quivering. “You have an eloquent face--what do you wish to say?” asked the lady. Fan still hesitated. “Trust me, my poor girl, and I shall help you. Then is something in your mind you would like to say.” Then Fan, losing all fear, said: _“He_ was not my father--the man that married mother. My father was a gentleman, but I don't know his name.” “I can very well believe it. Especially when I look at your eyes.” “Mother said my eyes were just like my father's,” said Fan, with growing confidence and a touch of pride. “Perhaps they are like his in one way, my poor girl,” said the other, a little frown clouding her forehead. “In another way they are very different, I should think. No one who ever did a cruel thing could have had that expression in his eyes.” After sitting in silence for some time, still with that frown on her beautiful face, her eyes resting thoughtfully on the tessellated floor, she roused herself, and taking out her purse, gave Fan half-a-crown. “Go home now,” she said, “and come again to-morrow at the same hour.”