"Thank you; I'll take it," she said, in answer to the chair he offered. "And I will take off my fur," she added, unwinding a boa from her neck, and untying her bonnet-strings. "Your room feels very warm to one coming in from the keen air outside." There was something in her frank manners that struck most pleasingly on the mind of Oswald. She sat there as confidingly in his room as though he had been her brother: a good, modest, single-minded woman, whom even a bad man could not do otherwise than respect. "Yes, I came before Frank expected me;" she said. "I did not think I could have come so soon; but my friends kindly released me. You know my situation--why I could not come to him before." "I know that you are"--Oswald hesitated for a moment, and then went bravely on. Before that clear eye of plain good sense there was no need to mince the matter, and pretend ignorance. "I know that you are companion-attendant to a lady. And that you could not leave her." "I have been companion and maid to her all in one," said Miss Allister. "When I and Frank had to go out into the world and do the best we could for ourselves, I was obliged to look out for what I was most fitted for. Our dead mother's brother offered to help Frank, and he paid the premium with him to this house, and assisted him otherwise, and I was very glad it should be so----" "You mean Mr. Brown?" interrupted Oswald. "Yes. He lived in London. My mother was English born and reared. He was a good friend to us so long as he lived. It was necessary that I should go out; and a situation offered in a lady's family, Mrs. Graham. She wanted some one who would be her companion, sit with her, read to her, some one well reared, of whom she might make an equal, but who would at the same time act as maid; and I took it. But perhaps you have heard all this from Frank?" "No, not these past details. Though he has talked of you very much. He has told me"--Oswald broke into a frank smile as he said it--"that his sister Jane was worth her weight in gold."