"There was but another week of the Long, a week which under ordinary conditions I should have spent with my widowed mother at her house in the country, but which I decided to spend in London, accepting Gerald's invitation to share his rooms in Arundel Street, and do a final round of the theatres; an invitation I had previously declined. During that week I was often in Great Ormond Street, and contrived to learn a great deal more about Esperanza's character and history. Of her history all she had to tell; of her character, which to me seemed transparent as a forest streamlet, all I could divine. I called in Ormond Street on the second day of her residence there, and found good Nurse Martha in the best possible humour. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, and she insisted that I should stop for a cup of tea, and as tea-making--that is to say, the art of producing a better cup of tea than anybody else could produce from the same cannister, kettle, and teapot--had always been a special talent of Martha's, I was glad to accept her hospitality. "Miss Campbell had gone for a little walk round the squares, she informed me. "'She doesn't care about going out,' explained Martha; 'she'd rather sit over a book or play the harmonium. But I told her she must take an airing for her health's sake.' "I was disappointed at not finding Esperanza in the tidy back parlour to which Nurse Martha ushered me--a room of exemplary neatness and snugness, enlivened by those living presences which always make for cheerfulness--vulgar as we may deem them--a glass tank of gold fish, a canary bird, and a magnificent tabby cat, sleek, clean, luxuriously idle, in purring contemplation of the bright little fire in the old-fashioned grate, that grate with hobs which reminded me of my nursery deep in the heart of the country. "'Now you sit down in Blake's armchair, Mr. George, and let's have a talk over missy. I shouldn't have taken those two sovereigns from you the night before last if I hadn't been all of a muddle with the suddenness of the thing. I don't want to be paid in advance for doing a kindness to a helpless girl.' "'No, Martha; but since the helpless girl was on my hands, it's only right I should pay you somehow, and we may as well settle that question at once, as it may be several weeks before Miss Campbell is able to find a suitable situation.' "'Several months, more likely. Do you know how young she is, Mr. George?' "'Eighteen.'