He was with Miss Newton earlier than usual on the occasion of her next tea-drinking, so early as to be before anybody else, and he talked to his hostess about Marian—Marian Gray, Miss Newton called her,—confiding to her his conviction that this young woman was no other than Mrs. Porter’s missing daughter. He told her of his interview with Mrs. Porter, and of the mother’s angry repudiation of her child. “I can but think that her hardness was assumed,” he said, “and that the ice would melt at a touch if the mother and daughter could be brought together. I should like to try the experiment.” “It is hardly wise to try experiments with human hearts,” said Miss Newton. “Marian is contented and at peace, if not happy. To force her back upon a mother who might be hard and bitter to her—do you think that would be true kindness?” “What if the mother’s heart has been yearning for her lost lamb in all these years, and by bringing her back I might make two lives happy?” “Let the mother come to the child. Let her who has something to forgive be the one to make the advance. It is so hard for the sinner to go back. She must be helped back. If the mother were a woman with a motherly heart, she would have been searching for her lost child in all those years, instead of wrapping herself up in her sorrow at home.” “I own I have thought that.” “Of course you have. You can’t think otherwise as a sensible man. I have no patience with such a mother. As for Marian, I think she may get on very well as she is. I am fond of her, and I believe she is fond of me. She earns from twelve to fourteen shillings a week. She pays five shillings for her room, and she lives upon eightpence a day. I needn’t tell you that the teapot is her _pièce de résistance_. Her most substantial meal on some days consists of a couple of scones from the Scotch baker’s, or a penny loaf and a hard-boiled egg; but when I go to see her she gives me an admirable cup of tea, and positively delicious bread and butter. Her room is the very pink and pattern of neatness. All the instincts of a lady show themselves in that poor little two-pair back. She has curtained the iron bedstead and the window with white dimity, which is always clean and fresh, for she washes and irons it with her own hands. She generally contrives to have a bunch of flowers upon her work-table, and, hard as she works, her room is always free from litter. She has about half a dozen books of her own upon the mantelshelf, her Bible, Milton, Shakespeare, Charles Lamb’s Essays, Goldsmith’s Poems, and the ‘Idyls of the King’—well-worn volumes, which have been her companions for years. She borrows other books from the Free Library, and her mind is always being cultivated. I really believe she is happy. She is one of those rare individuals who can afford to live alone. Do not disturb her lightly.”