"My dear girl," said Mrs. Bloxam,--and she said it quite sincerely, with true interest: there had been a fascination for her about the girl since her return, a charm partly arising from the uncommonness of her disposition and manners, and partly from the elder woman's dim perception of the pitifulness of her story,--"I am not thinking about that. I am thinking about you, and of what you must have suffered, to have made you turn your back so resolutely on your past life. You are so young, Gertrude." "Grace, if you please," said the younger woman, and she touched Mrs. Bloxam's hand for a moment. In the slight caress there was a little softening, and the other took advantage of it. "You may trust me, my dear, you may indeed," she said. "I don't pretend to be disinterested in many of the occurrences of my life; I could not afford to be so--no woman can who has her bread to earn--and I have not acted disinterestedly towards you; but I will if you will trust me." An unusual expression of gentleness was in Mrs. Bloxam's face, and her shallow shifty blue eyes grew almost deep and almost steady under the influence of unwonted feeling. Gertrude sat still before her, with downcast eyes. A little interval of silence passed, and then she looked up, and spoke. "I will trust you, Mrs. Bloxam, as much as I can ever trust anyone in this world. I am separated for ever, of my own free will, by my own irrevocable decision, from my husband. I cannot tell you why in more than general terms. Gilbert Lloyd is a bad man--I am not a particularly good woman; but I could not live with him, and I trust I may never see him again. My life is at my own disposal now; I have no friend but you." There was no tremor in her voice, no quiver through her slight frame, as this young girl gave so terrible an account of herself. "But if he claims you?" said Mrs. Bloxam. "He will never claim me," replied Gertrude; and there was that in her voice and in her look which carried conviction to her hearer's mind. "He is more than dead to me--he is as though he had never lived." "My poor child, how wretched you must be!" exclaimed Mrs. Bloxam, almost involuntarily.