Just what were her own intentions with regard to Teddy, or his mother, Mrs. Legrange did not herself know; and, once arrived in the room where 'Toinette had lived out the weary months since her loss, all other ideas had faded and disappeared before the memories there confronting her. Now, however, the sweet and generous nature of the woman re-asserted itself, and she kindly said,-- "Yes: I see how great Teddy's temptation was, and I cannot wonder that he yielded to it. Any one would have found it hard to part with 'Toinette; and he, poor boy! could not know how I was suffering. It would have been different if you had known who she was." "Indade an' it would. One moother can fale fer another; but these childhren hasn't the sinse till they gits the sorrer. Small fear that Teddy'll iver go asthray agin from light-heartedness." "Does he feel very sorry, then?" asked Mrs. Legrange timidly. "Sorry isn't the word, ma'am. It's his own heart as he consumes day an' night," said Mrs. Ginniss gloomily. "Because she is lost, or because he kept her in the first place?" asked the lady. "It's hard tellin', an' he niver spakin' whin he can help it; but I belave it's all together. He wor sich a bowld b'y, an' so sthrong for risin' in the world; an' wor alluz sayin' as he'd be a gintleman afore he died, an' readin' his bit books and writins, an' tillin' me about the way the counthry wor goin'; an', right or wrong, it's he wor ready to guide the whole of 'em. An', sure, it wor wondherful to see the sinse that wor in him when he get spakin' of thim things; an' one day, whin I said to him,-- "'Sure, Teddy, an', if it's one or tither of 'em is Prisident, what differ'll it make to us?' An' he says, says he, 'Whist, moother! fer one day, mabbe, it's I'll be the Prisident mesilf; an' what way 'ud that be fer me moother to be talkin'?' "But now it's no sich talk ye'll git out uv him, an' niver a laugh nor a joke, nor the bit bowld ways he used to have wid him. An' och, honey! if ye've lost yer purty darlint, it's I've lost me b'y that wor as mooch to me; an' it's I'm the heavy-hearted woman, this' day an' alluz." CHAPTER XXVII. TEDDY FINDS A NEW PATRON. TEDDY, dragging his heavy feet up the stairs in the stifling September twilight, paused suddenly to listen to a murmur of voices in his mother's room. Some one was speaking; and the pure, clear tone sent a thrill through his veins like the shock of an electric battery. No voice but one had ever sounded like that to him; and, springing up the remaining stairs, Teddy threw open the door of the chamber, and looked eagerly about it. The one for whom he looked was not there; but, instead, a lady, whose fragile loveliness reminded him so strangely of the little sister as she had looked in her long days of convalescence, that he stood still, staring dumbly.