‘No, sir.... Get out!’—to two or three little children who have appeared on the threshold, anxious, no doubt, for their dinner, and wondering what is keeping their mammy. ‘But if you did hear of Miss Ella—we all used to call her “Miss Ella,” though she was, as it might be, one of ourselves—I’d be glad to get a word from you. She was very good to my little Katie, an’ she would come in of an evenin’ an’ give her a lesson, just as if I could pay for it. There was very few like her, sir, an’ that I tell you,’ says Mrs. Morgan, whose eyes, in spite of her wonderful dirtiness, are handsome now because of the honest, kindly tears that shine in them. ‘An’ it’s me own opinion,’ goes on the grimy woman, ‘that she never belonged to them Moores at all—that she was stolen like by Mr. Moore.’ ‘Or by his wife?’ suggests Wyndham. ‘Oh no, poor soul!’ says Mrs. Morgan. ‘She’—with delicate phraseology—‘hadn’t a kick in her. But we often said—my husband and I—that perhaps Mrs. Moore had been a servant in some great family, an’ had taken a—a child, that—beggin’ yer pardon, sir—mightn’t be altogether wanted.’ This view of Mrs. Morgan’s takes root in Wyndham’s mind. An illegitimate child! An unacknowledged scion of some good family! Poor, poor child! poor Ella! ‘You may be right,’ he said. The interview was at an end. Seeing two of Mrs. Morgan’s children peeping in again, hungry and disconsolate, he beckons them to him, and after awhile they slowly, and with open distrust, creep towards him. Was that the Katie—that little dark-eyed, handsome child—that she used to teach? Wyndham caught her and drew her towards him, and pressed half-a-sovereign into her hand, and then caught the little boy hanging on her scanty skirts, and pressed another little yellow piece into his soft but unwashed palm, after which he bid the grateful Mrs. Morgan adieu, and walked out of their lives for ever. But what she had told him went with him. Who is this girl Ella Moore—this girl who is now his tenant? He had insisted on her being his tenant, on her paying him rent. That was as much to satisfy her as to satisfy some scruples of his own. She was really, of course, no more to him than any other tenant might be—and yet— For one thing, who is she? One does not, as a rule, rent one’s houses to people, not only unknown and without a reference, but actually without a name. * * * * *