go at once!" she whispered to herself; and then hurriedly put on her bonnet and shawl, and made for the staircase. She thought that she was doing right, and that good would come of it; and she did not hesitate. Before her, in the distance, sat the solitary figure of him she loved, friendless, alone, and benighted; and her woman's heart yearned to go to him, and forgot all else.

Thus forgetting, thus yearning to do good, Mattie made a false step, and turned her back upon her father's home.

CHAPTER II.

MATTIE'S ADVISER.

Mattie reached Chesterfield Terrace as the clock was striking nine. Ann Packet almost shouted with alarm at the sight of the new visitor, and then looked intently over Mattie's shoulder.

"He hasn't come back again, has he? Mr. Sidney's been in such a dreadful way about him, Mattie. Blind as he is, I think he'll try to murder him."

"I have come instead. He will see me, I hope."

She did not wait to be announced, but turned the handle of the parlour-door and entered. Sidney Hinchford, in a harsh voice, cried out,

"Who's there?"

"Only Mattie. May I come in?"

"Mattie here at this hour! Come in, if you will. What is it?"

He was seated in the great leathern arm-chair, that had been his father's favourite seat, in the old attitude that Mattie knew so well now. She shuddered at the change in him—the wreck of manhood that one affliction had reduced him to, and the impulse that had brought her there was strengthened.

"Mr. Sidney," she said, approaching, "I have come to ask a favour of you."

"I am past dispensing favours, Mattie. Unless—unless it's to listen patiently to that horrible father of yours. Then I say No—for he drives me mad with his monotony."

"I have come to defend you from him, if he call again—to live here, and take care of you as a dear brother who requires care, and must not be left entirely to strangers."

"I am better by myself, Mattie—fit company only for myself."

"No, the worst of company for that."

"It must not be."

"I can earn my own living; I shall be no burden to you; I have a hope—such a grand hope, sir!—of making this home a different place to you. Why, I can always make the best of it, I think—he thought so, too, before he died."

"Who—my father?" asked Sidney, wondering.

"Yes—he wished that I should come here, and I promised him. Oh! Mr. Sidney, for a little while, before you have become resigned to this great trouble, let me stay!"

He might have read the truth—the whole truth—in that urgent pleading, but he was shut away from light, and sceptical of any love for him abiding anywhere throughout the world.

"If he wished it, Mattie—stay. If your father says not No to this, why, stay until you tire of me, and the utter wretchedness of such a life as mine."

"Why utterly wretched?"

"I don't know—don't ask again."

"Others have been afflicted like you before, sir, and borne their heavy burden well."

"Why do you 'sir' me? That's new."

"I called your father sir,—you take your father's place," said Mattie, hastily.

"A strange reason—I wonder if it's true."

Mattie coloured, but he could not see her blushes, and whether true or false, mattered little to him then. A new suspicion seized him after awhile, when he had thought more deeply of Mattie's presence there.

"If this is a new trick of your father's to preach to me through you, I warn you, Mattie."

"I have told you why I am here."

"No other reason but that promise to my father?"

"Yes, one promise more—to myself. Mr. Hinchford," she said, noticing his sudden start, "I promised my heart, when I was very young—when I was a stray!—that it should never swerve from those who had befriended me. It will not—it beats the faster with the hope of doing service to all who helped me in my wilful girlhood."

"I told a lie, and said you did not steal my brooch!"

"That was not all, but that taught me gratitude. Say a lie, but it was a lie that saved me from the prison—from the new life, worse, a thousand times worse than the first."

"You are a strange girl—you were always strange. I am curious to know how soon you will tire of me, or I shall tire of you and this new freak. When I confess you weary me—you will go?"

"Yes."

"Then stay—and God help you with your charge."

His lip curled again, but it was with an effort. He was no true stoic, and Mattie's earnestness had moved him more than he cared to evince. He was curious to note the effect of Mattie's efforts to make the dull world anything better than it was—he who knew how simple-minded and ingenuous Mattie was, and how little she could fathom his thoughts, or understand them. He had spent a month of horrible isolation, and it had seemed long years to him—years in which he had aged and grown grey perhaps, it was more likely than not. He felt like an old man, with whom the world was a weary resting-place; and he was despondent enough to wish to die, and end the tragedy that had befallen him. He had not believed in any sacrifice for his sake, and Mattie had surprised him by stealing in upon his solitude, and offering her help. He was more surprised to think that he had accepted her services in lieu of turning contemptuously away. It was something new to think of, and it did him good.

The next day life began anew under Mattie's supervision. She was the old Mattie of Great Suffolk Street days—a brisk step and a cheerful voice, an air of bustle and business about her, which it was pleasant to hear in the distance. When the house duties were arranged for the day, Mattie began her needlework in the parlour where Sidney sat; and though Sidney spoke but little, and replied only in monosyllables to her, yet she could see the change was telling upon him, and she felt that there would come a time when he would be his dear old self again. When the day was over, her own troubles began. In her own room, she thought of the father whom she had abandoned—of his loneliness, left behind at his work in that front top room, which had been home to her. She was not sorry that she had left him, for there was an old promise, an old love for Sidney, to buoy her up; but she was very, very sorry that they had parted in anger, and that her father had resented a step in which his Christian charity should have at once encouraged her. By and bye it would all come right; her father would understand her and her motives; by and bye, when Sidney had become reconciled to his lot in life, and there were no more duties to fulfil, she would return home, unasked even, and offer to be again the daughter whom her father had professed to love. For the present, life in Sidney's home, doing her duty by him whom she loved best in the world; she could not let him suffer, and not do her best to work a change in him.

Mattie worked a change—a great one. The instinct that assured her she possessed that power had not deceived her; and Sidney, though he became never again his former self, altered for the better. This change strengthened Mattie in her resolves, and made amends for her father's silence. She had written to Mr. Gray a long letter a few days after she had left his home, explaining her conduct more fully, entering more completely into the details of her former relations to the Hinchfords and the friends she had found in them; trusting that her father would believe that she loved him none the less for the step which she had taken—she who would have been more happy had he consented thereto—and hoping for the better days when she could return and take once more her place beside him. She had also asked in her letter that her box might be sent her, and he had considered that request as the one object of her writing, and responded to it by the transmission of the box and its contents, keeping back all evidence of his own trouble and anger.