"I'm afraid so. I thought shame to beguile a poor old man that way, but, sir, I could not stop it. He came every day, and they looked in the crystal--just as they were doing this afternoon, you know. He's worse now; I think he forgets betweenwhiles what was said the last time they looked. Then, one day, _he_ told me we were to come here to live. It was wrong--I knew it; but when I saw it, and thought what I could do--and I did so want to have a home and--and be respectable--and I thought, too, if I worked hard and made it nice, it would be a--a kind of payment, wouldn't it? I couldn't help longing to----" "Don't cry that way," I said. "I can't bear to see you cry." "I can't help it," she sobbed. "It's so hard to leave it all." "Well, then, why leave it?" said I. "_He_ has to, surely; but that need make no difference to you. We must have a housekeeper, you know." She gave me a woeful glance; and I understood that, according to her poor little code, it would be more "respectable" to resume her journeyings with the fat crystal-gazer than to stay in the house with Nick Pendarves as his grandfather's housekeeper. Here was a ticklish point to argue with her; and, for all her tears, there was a firmness in the set of her chin (it was dented with a dimple) that warned me such argument would be a waste of time. She had made up her mind, and would stand to it at all costs. It was martyrdom in an eminently feminine style; women deliver themselves up to it day by day, and contrive to be perfectly unreasonable, yet somehow in the right. She wiped her eyes presently, shut her mouth on a sob, and went resolutely about her work. We had, after all, a tolerably cheerful evening in the kitchen. It seemed wisest for me not to show myself again before Captain Pendarves, but I am afraid I did not repine greatly at the banishment. As the door swung to and fro behind Mary carrying their dishes, I caught glimpses of the gloomy parlor, my grandfather huddled in his chair by the table, with bright, roving eyes; the sorcerer surprisingly busy about the food for a person of his ethereal habits; and, on the wall beyond, old Admiral Pendarves simpering eternally over his private fun. V