At the mention of this sum, all Laura's difficulties seemed to vanish. Besides enabling her to pay the surgeon, it would make an addition to her little fund. With rigorous abstinence on her part, this little fund, together with the price of her incessant labour, would pay for her lodgings, and support her father in happy ignorance of his poverty, till he was able to remove to Glenalbert. Then, when he was quite well and quite able to bear it, she would tell him how she had toiled for him, and he would see that he had not lavished his fondness on a thankless child. These thoughts occupied far less time than the recital; and yet, ere they were passed, Laura had untied the locket from her neck, and put it into the hands of the jeweller. It was not till she saw it in the hands of another, that she felt all the pain of parting with it. She asked to see it once more; as she gazed on it for the last time, tears trickled from her eyes; but speedily wiping them away, and averting her head, she restored the locket to its new owner, and taking up the money, departed. She soon arrived at the print-shop, and finding Wilkins disengaged, produced her drawing, and asked him to purchase it. Wilkins looked at it, and inquired what price she had put upon it. 'I am quite unacquainted with its real value,' answered she, 'but the rapid sale of my work is at present such an object to me, that I shall willingly make it as cheap as possible, or allow you to fix your own price.' 'Have you any more to dispose of, Ma'am?' asked Wilkins. 'I have none finished, but I could promise you six more in a week if you are inclined to take them.' 'I think,' said Wilkins, 'after some consideration, I might venture to take them if you could afford them for half a guinea each.' 'You shall have them,' said Laura, with a sigh; 'but I think half-a-guinea rather a low--a high, I believe, I mean.--' Laura did not at this moment exactly know what she meant; for her eyes had just rested on a gentleman, who, with his back towards her, was busied in examining a book of caricatures. She thought she could not be mistaken in the person. Only one form upon earth was endowed with such symmetry and grace; and that form was Hargrave's. He slightly turned his head, and Laura was certain. Though Laura neither screamed nor fainted, this recognition was not made without extreme emotion. She trembled violently, and a mist spread before her eyes; but she remembered the apparently wilful desertion of her lover; and, determined neither to claim his compassion nor gratify his vanity by any of the airs of a forsaken damsel, she quietly turned away from him, and leant against the counter to recover strength and composure.