“Kind is a poor word. She has been my angel of deliverance. She has saved me from the great dismal swamp of self-abasement and despair.” Miss Newton had walked briskly ahead with Theodore, so as to leave Lady Cheriton and Mercy together. Mercy ran after her friend, and brought her back a little way, as Lady Cheriton advanced to meet her. “Miss Newton, my one true and good friend in all this great world of London, and the only friend of my miserable childhood, Lady Cheriton,” said Mercy, looking from one to the other with that intent look of thoughtful minds that work in narrow grooves. “I thank you for being good to one in whose fate I am warmly interested, Miss Newton,” said Lady Cheriton. “You have done the work of the good Samaritan, and at least one wounded heart blesses you.” They walked on a little way together, and Lady Cheriton spoke of the old house and the old family, the vanished race with which Sarah Newton had been associated in her girlhood. “They are all dead, I understand?” she said, in conclusion. “Yes, there is none left of the old family. They are not a fortunate race, and I fear there are few who regret them; but I cannot help feeling sorry that they are all gone. They have passed away like a dream when one awakens.” Lady Cheriton lingered on the river-side pathway for nearly half-an-hour, talking to Mercy and Miss Newton. Theodore left them together, after having obtained Mercy’s permission to call at her lodgings on the following afternoon. CHAPTER XXVII. “I saw her too. Yes, but you must not love her. I will not, as you do; to worship her, As she is heavenly and a blessed goddess; I love her as a woman.” A decent-looking woman opened the door of the house in Hercules Buildings, and ushered Mr. Dalbrook up two flights of stairs to the small back-room in which Mercy Porter had lived her lonely life from year’s end to year’s end. The tasteful arrangement of that humble chamber struck Theodore at the first glance. He had seen such rooms at Cambridge, where an undergraduate of small means had striven to work wonders with a few shabby old sticks that had done duty for half-a-dozen other undergraduates, and which had been but of poorest quality when they issued, new and sticky with cheap varnish, from the emporium of a local upholsterer. Mercy was very pale, and although she received her visitor with outward calmness, he could see that she had not yet recovered from yesterday’s agitation. “What induced you to take so much trouble to betray me, Mr. Dalbrook?” she asked. “Betray is a very hard word, Miss Porter.” “You don’t suppose that I believed yesterday’s meeting was accidental? You took the trouble to bring Lady Cheriton across my path in order to satisfy your curiosity about my identity. Was that generous?”