He hesitated. 'All?' he asked. 'All? Can you spare it? I can never repay----' 'Take it!' she said again, imperiously. He obeyed: he took the gold out of the purse with trembling fingers. Then he raised his rickety old hat--was that a tear that stole into his eyes, or the rheum of old age?--and slowly walked down the stairs, holding by the banisters. He was weak, poor wretch! with hunger. But it was his dinner hour, and he was going to have his dinner. Elsie sat down again. It was half-past six--she had been waiting for three hours--when other footsteps entered the house. Elsie sprang to her feet: she turned pale: her heart stood still; for now she realised that if this step was truly that of the man she expected, she was about to confront a person certainly of the deepest criminality, and possibly capable of villainy in any other direction. The steps mounted the stairs. I really think that the bravest persons in the world are those who before the event look forward to it with the utmost apprehension. They know, you see, what the dangers are. Elsie was going to face a great danger. She was going to find out, alone and unaided, who this man was, and why and how he worked these deeds of darkness. The footsteps mounted higher: from the door to the top of the stairs it took but a single minute, yet to Elsie it seemed half an hour, so rapid were her thoughts. Then the man mounted the last flight of steps. Heavens! Elsie was fain to cry out for sheer amazement. She cried out: she caught at the banisters. For, before her, taking the key of Mr. Edmund Gray's Chambers from his waistcoat pocket, was none other than Mr. Dering himself! Yes. An elderly man, of truly benevolent aspect, his coat open flying all abroad, his face soft, gracious, smiling, and full of sunshine, his hat just the least bit pushed back, his left hand in his pocket. Elsie thought again of her portrait at home, in which she had transformed her guardian--and here he was in the flesh--transformed according to her portrait. She stared at him with an amazement that bereft her of speech and of motion. She could only stare. Even if her mother's voice were suddenly to call out to her that it is rude for little girls to stare, she could not choose but stare. For Mr. Dering looked at her with that kind of surprise in his eyes which means, 'What have we here to do with beautiful young ladies?' There was not the least sign of any knowledge of her. He looked at her as one suffers the eyes to rest for a moment without interest upon a stranger and a casual passenger in the street. He opened his outer door, and was about to walk in, when she recovered some presence of mind--not much. She stepped forward. 'Can you tell me, please, how I could find Mr. Edmund Gray?' 'Certainly,' he smiled--'nothing easier. 'I am Edmund Gray.'