Georgie's astonishment was increasing. She marked the earnest gaze her strange visitor fixed upon her. She saw how her face softened and glowed as she looked at her. She knew that this young woman had a kindly feeling towards her; and she was so lonely, so deserted, that she felt grateful for that, though the person who bestowed it upon her was only a humble governess. She stretched out her hand by a sudden impulse, and Miss Gillespie caught and kissed it with intense fervour. "You shall stay with me as long as you please, and tell me all your story, Miss Gillespie. I have done nothing to deserve the interest I see you feel in me; but I thank you for it." Her visitor did not immediately reply: she sat looking at Georgie's face, more beautiful in its expression of grief and courage than when it was at its brightest, as though she were learning the features by heart. Lady Mitford blushed a little under the scrutiny, and smiled, as she said: "You look at me very earnestly, Miss Gillespie. What is there in my face to fix your attention?" "There is everything that I once did not believe in, while I longed to see it. There is beauty, Lady Mitford--well, I have seen enough of that; but there is truth and gentleness, sweet self-forgetfulness, and an impulse of kindness to everything that lives and feels and can suffer. The first time I saw that face I thought of the common saying about the face of an angel; but I soon ceased to think it was like that. Angels are in heaven, where their sinless and sorrowless sphere lies. Such women as you are on earth, to teach those who, standing far off, see them, to hope, and believe, and take comfort, because they exist and have their part in the same troubled world with themselves, but always bringing the image and the ideal of a better nearer, and making it real." Her voice trembled, and tears stood in her eyes. Georgie wondered more and more. "When I have told you my story, Lady Mitford," she went on, "you will be able to understand in a degree--you never could quite comprehend it--the effect that such a woman as you produces upon such a woman as I; for I studied you more closely than you could have suspected in that brief time at Redmoor; and I hold a clue to your history, of whose existence you were ignorant." "Do not tell me anything that it will pain you to repeat, Miss Gillespie," said Georgie, seeing that she hesitated and changed colour.