"I promised," he said, "that when next we met, you should see Vera as she is, and to-night you shall do so, but first of all I will give you an account of a scene that happened six years ago. You remember the home for orphan children that Vera and Agnes started. For a few years it continued under their joint care, but then, owing to a reason which I will explain later, the entire charge was thrown upon Agnes, and the home has been for the last seven years, and is now, under her sole management. Six years ago I went to see her, and told her of a case which seemed in every way worthy of relief. A young woman, who had been left a widow a few months previously, was dying. She had one child, a little girl about eighteen months old; this child would soon be totally unprovided for, as, though the mother had been well brought up, and was of gentle birth, her own and her husband’s relations were dead. Anxiety on her baby’s account was adding greatly to the poor woman’s suffering. You may fancy that Agnes required no urging in such a case, and she went with me at once on this errand of mercy. We found the mother and her child in a small badly-furnished room in one of the poorest parts of Manchester. Since her husband’s death she had done a little dressmaking, and so kept her child and herself from starvation. Notwithstanding the ravages of disease, she was still a beautiful woman; and as she told Agnes her story, the mystery of sorrow bravely borne, and apparently meaningless as far as this life was concerned, affected her listener deeply. Her parents had died when she was about seventeen; they had been fairly well off, having made a small fortune in Australia; her father, however, during the closing years of his life had speculated rashly, and when he died a few months after his wife, the estate had to be wound up in bankruptcy. His only daughter Ellen managed after some little difficulty to get a situation as nursery-governess to the children of a wealthy Australian, who was about to sail with his family for England. Ellen lived with these people for three years, and, from what she said, her life must have been far from happy. Those who have recently risen from an inferior social position are as a rule the most overbearing to any one whom they consider their subordinate; the value of wealth is so impressed upon them that they can hardly realize that the governess in their pay is their social equal, or may be, as in this case, their superior. The torment that such persons inflict on a young, and sensitive nature is indescribable. It is often bad enough to be ruled over by those we respect, but to be slighted, or still worse patronized, by those whose instincts and habits revolt us is torture. Such was this girl’s life, until she met by accident her future husband; he was a young journalist, who through hard work and ability had made his way into a position which brought him in a precarious £300 a year.