“I would do anything in my power to help that poor girl,” she said; “for I think her sadly to be pitied. Her girlhood was so dull and joyless—such a ceaseless round of lessons and practice, without any of those pleasures to which most school-girls look forward. Her mother seemed to take a pride in keeping the girl apart from every one, in dressing her plainly, and in making her whole life as dreary as she could. I hardly wonder that the poor, hopeless creature surrendered to the first tempter—a man whose manner to women had always been called irresistible, even by women of the world, and a man who would not shrink from any amount of falsehood in pursuing his wicked aim. And now she is paying forfeit for her sin with a lonely life of toil in a London garret. Poor Mercy! She was so pretty and so refined—a lady in all her instincts.” Cuthbert Ramsay left on Monday, promising to return at the end of the week; and Theodore went up to town with Lady Cheriton on the following Wednesday. He went straight from the terminus to Wedgewood Street, where he saw Miss Newton, told her of Lord Cheriton’s benevolent intentions to Marian, alias Mercy, and arranged the walk in Battersea Park for the following afternoon. Miss Newton and her _protégée_ were to be walking upon the pathway beside the river at half-past three o’clock, when Lady Cheriton would drive that way. Miss Newton had no difficulty in carrying out her part of the little plot. Marian was always ready to put aside her work for the pleasure of an afternoon with that one friend to whom her heart was ever open. She met Miss Newton at the starting-place of the tramcar, and they rode through the dusty crowded highways to the People’s Park, where the flower-beds were gaudy with the rank luxuriance that is the beginning of the end of summer’s good things, and where the geranium leaves were riddled by voracious slugs. There was a dustiness and worn-out air upon all the foliage and all the flowers, despite the coolness that came from the swiftly-flowing river—an air of fading and decay which pervades even the outermost regions of London when the season is over and the world of fashion has fled—the air of a theatre when the play is done and the lights are extinguished. Sarah Newton and her young friend walked slowly along the gravel pathway, looking dreamily at the bright river, with its gay movement of passing boats and flowing waters. The elder of the two friends, who was wont to be full of cheery talk of newspapers and books, the history of the present, and the history of the past, was to-day unusually grave and silent. “I’m afraid you are not well, dear Miss Newton,” said Marian, looking at her anxiously. “Oh, yes, my dear, I am well enough. You know I am made of cast-iron, and except for the toothache, or a cold in my head, I hardly know what illness means. I am only a little thoughtful.”