This was not at all what Hermia wanted, so she made haste to say: "Are you not curious, Mr. Varrel, to know why I have come all this way to find you? But, first of all, why did you neglect to answer the letter I wrote you to this address more than a week ago?" "Letter!--what letter?" he queried, with a half-mazed look, and with that he pushed back his hat and pressed his hands to his forehead for a few moments, as if trying to recall something to mind. Then, half-doubtingly, he thrust his hand into an inner pocket of his coat and drew from it a letter--the one Hermia had written him, as she saw at a glance, and still unopened. He stared at it for a space of a dozen seconds, and then he said, confusedly: "I recollect, now, I put it in my pocket when it came--I wasn't very well at the time--and afterwards I forgot all about it. I did, upon my honor!" "Open it and read it," was all Hermia could say. When he had done so, he looked at her with a question in his eyes which his lips seemed afraid to ask. "Your mother died three days ago," said Hermia, "looking to the last for the son who never came." He turned away, and putting up an arm against the door-post, he leaned his head upon it. The tears that dropped from his eyes made tiny black dents in the grimy dust into which they fell. "I've not one word of excuse, Miss Hermia, to urge for myself," he said presently. "I put the letter in my pocket, and forgot all about it. It was all owing to the drink--the cursed drink!" Thereupon Hermia proceeded to give him his mother's last message. "God bless her! She was a good woman," he said, sorrowfully. "Maybe, if I had been a different son to her she would have lived for years to come." That he was genuinely moved by the news of his mother's death it was impossible to doubt. "The errand which brought me here is not yet completed," said Hermia, presently. "Your mother entrusted me with a sum of money to give into your hands." His cheek paled on the instant. "Hush! Not a word about it here," he whispered, with a quick, apprehensive glance around. "If the wretches hereabouts once suspected that I had anything more than the merest trifle in the way of money in my possession, I should be a dead man before to-morrow morning. Will you come into my room for three minutes, Miss Rivers? You may safely do so, and I won't detain you longer." Mr. Wingate was still keeping watch and ward at the corner of the street. "Lead the way and I will follow," was all she said. Accordingly, they entered the house, and after Varrel had shut the door behind them he led the way up a rickety staircase, the handrail of which had been torn away, into a small back room on the first floor. Never before had Hermia been in such a room; but the evening was drawing in by this time, and in the half light its more sordid features did not seem so obtrusive as they would have done at mid-day.