It is probable that the influence which Uffington had quietly and inexplicably acquired over her contributed a great deal to this result. That influence, always exercised for her good, without any special or direct application, without the remotest possibility of wounding her, even at her most sensitive times, was exerted in destroying the baleful influence of her bringing-up and her previous surroundings, and in endeavouring to induce her to take a healthier, quieter, and broader view of life. The peculiar circumstances which had overshadowed Uffington's existence at an early period of what looked to be a very promising career had not indeed made him 'kindly with his kind,' had not opened any well of gushing sentiment and rendered him generally philanthropic. On the contrary, among his friends the fountain of his feelings was supposed to be frozen over, and it was certain that, towards the majority of his acquaintance--he never could allow to himself that any one had further intimacy with him--he maintained a sufficiently icy exterior; but there was something in May Forestfield which touched him far more deeply than he would have admitted or than he would have liked to be known. On the first night of his seeing her, when Tom Lydyeard had pointed her out at the Opera, he felt an odd kind of interest in her, such as for years no human being had awakened in him; an interest which was strengthened when he learned that she was the daughter of the woman who had patronised his youth and offered to stand by him when the rest of the world turned their backs. Nor was this interest lessened when he learnt of the folly and sin which she had committed; crimes comparatively roughly venial in his eyes, which had seen greater wrong-doing far less visited. His experience had taught him that the critical time of all others was when the consequences of discovery first began to be felt, when all fear of the past or for the future was merged in the desperation of the present, and when, a fatal recklessness taking possession of the soul, all chance of restoration to a healthy tone was in the highest degree imperilled. Nor had the fact of having made her personal acquaintance in the manner already shown lessened Uffington's interest in May Forestfield. He found her mentally much weaker than he had anticipated; a mere child drifting hither and thither under stress of the winds of circumstance, unstable and almost purposeless; but he recognised in an instant that it was owing to this mental weakness, to this indecision and want of force of character, that she had become what she was--a deserted woman, a proscribed wife, without even the poor satisfaction of feeling that she had deeply loved and been deeply loved by the man for whose sake she had fallen.