No, it was not love I felt, but deep gratitude that an example of self-sacrifice and devotion should have crushed forever out of me the impious doubt of the existence of a beneficent Creator. It was to this I owed my salvation, and as I paced the foggy street I thought of the daughter toiling for her sick mother. I saw her patient face of suffering, heard her wistful voice saying: "I will pay you to-morrow; I have some work to take back." Ah, what a story is here revealed! I dwelt upon the modesty which caused her to shrink from the compassionate advances of a stranger, and with tears in my eyes dwelt also upon the child-like confidence she had reposed in me. She became to me an incarnation of purity. There were good women in the world--thank God for that. Through her spirit my faith in human goodness was restored, and I saw my life in a clearer light, unstained and unclouded by vice and degradation. Peace, if not happiness, might yet be mine. To one course I pledged myself, and vowed that nothing should turn me from it. I would never live with my wife again; her revolting duplicities, her shameful debasement, should no longer torture me. I would be done with her, so far as personal association went, and with those other relatives who had systematically persecuted me and maligned me. The infamous law--wickedly and falsely called the law of God--which bound me to a living curse, to a moral pest, could not compel me to inhabit the house in which she indulged in her depravities. Of so much of my fortune as was left she should have a share, and should receive it through an agent. One visit only would I pay to what was in mockery called my home, and that for the purpose of removing my private papers. Then would I shake the dust of that earthly hell from my feet, and turn my back upon it forever. To this end I must efface myself, and must be known henceforth by another name than Fordham. That was easy, and I was stung by no reproach as to justification. If ever a man was justified in practising such a deceit it was I. My musings were interrupted by the unclosing of the street door. The doctor was there, and Miss Cameron; he was bidding her take some repose. "We must not have you break down," he said. "Ah, here is our friend. The fog has not swallowed him up." "How can I thank you?" she said to me, holding out her hand. It trembled as it lay for a moment in mine, and her eyes shone with tears. "By following the doctor's advice," I replied, "and by allowing me to call when I have had some rest myself. Your mother is no worse, I hope?" The doctor--one of those sensible practitioners who help their patients to get well by bright words--answered for her. "No, not worse, not at all, not at all. With heaven's help we'll set her up again. There, there, my dear, don't cry; and what are you about, stopping here in the cold? Go and lie down. I will send the medicine at nine o'clock."