answered, "but people are a little chary of engaging employees recommended by bachelors like myself. Cicely might help her, but, first of all, I must find out if she is genuine. I couldn't impose a stranger, even on Cicely, good-natured, easy-going little soul that she is. And to find out anything about this girl will entail—meeting her!"

Margaret Stanforth smiled.

"Poor Rupert!"

"I am not by way of making rendezvous with young women," he said with sarcasm; "it is not a pastime in which I have ever indulged. At the same time, I don't want to let a fellow creature go empty away, if I could really help her."

"How would it be if you suggested her coming here? I could see her too, and—two heads being better than one—we might be able to do something really helpful. If the letter is sincere, it is obvious the girl is not a mere husband hunter; she is at her wits' end, and—I can't bear to think of any girl stranded in this great hungry London. I myself"—she pulled herself up short, leaving her sentence unfinished, then went on more quietly: "Write to C.M. and appoint a meeting here. Say this is the house of a lady of your acquaintance, ask her to come and see me—and incidentally to see you."

"It is like you to make such a suggestion about a total stranger," Rupert exclaimed, "but—she may turn out an entire fraud—an arrant adventuress—and I could not be responsible for bringing such a person here."

"Such a person! My dear Rupert, even if she were all the terrible things you describe, I don't think she could hurt me. I have seen—so much of the seamy side of life." For a moment Rupert looked at her silently. Long as he had known her, Margaret Stanforth was still largely an enigma to him, and it often seemed to him that the mysterious depths of her eyes veiled mysteries of her life which he had never fathomed.

"For my own sake, for this girl's sake, I should like to jump at your offer," he said, after that long, searching look into her face, "but——"

"There is no 'but,'" she put in gaily, a sudden smile momentarily chasing away the sadness of her face. "Write a civil, non-committal letter to C.M., and ask her, as I say, to come here. Surely, between us, we can do something for this poor little waif and stray. Why not fix to-morrow afternoon, at five o'clock? If the poor girl's need is urgent, we ought not to delay."

"And—you forgive me for all I ought not to have said this morning," Rupert said when, ten minutes later, he rose to depart. "I—have not hurt you?"

"No, you have not hurt me; but in future, you will remember—our bargain? And there are some things—I can't bear."

Rupert Mernside walked slowly away from the house, his brain and heart full of the woman he had just left, who, after his departure, lay back amongst the silken cushions on her sofa, with a look of profound exhaustion.

"There now, my dearie, you didn't ought to let him come and tire you this way; you get worn out with him coming worrying." The faithful Elizabeth had entered the room with a salver in her hand, and stood looking into her mistress's white face, with distress written all over her plain kindly features. Margaret opened her eyes, and smiled up into the loving ones fixed upon her.

"No, he doesn't worry me; he is—a comfort, he helps me. Don't scold, nursie dear; his friendship is one of the best things I have in life—one of the best things I have left out of all the wreckage; but to-day—he brought back some of the old memories, and—I—am so silly still. They hurt; sometimes it all feels—unbearable."

The ring of almost uncontrollable pain in her voice, brought a spasm of answering pain into the other's face, and she laid a work-roughened hand tenderly upon the dusky head against the cushions. "There, my dearie, there—there," she murmured, speaking as if her beautiful, stately mistress were a little child; "there's nothing so hard in this world but what it can be borne, if we look at it in the right way. The strength comes along with the sorrow, and 'tis all for the best."

"Is it?" Into the dark eyes there flashed for a second a look of bitterness, and then Margaret drew the other woman's hand down to her lips, and kissed it. "I wish I had your simple straightforward faith, dear old nurse of mine," she said wearily; "you are so sure things will come right, and that what hurts us is for our good. And I—I can't say, 'Thy will be done'; at least, I can't say it as if I meant it. But what did you bring in on that salver?" she asked, after a moment of silence, and with an effort at brightness.

"There, my pretty; I nearly forgot it after all. It came when I was speaking to the butcher on the doorstep, and Mr. Mernside was here, so I waited to bring it in till he was gone."

She had a purpose in lengthening her story, and chatting on garrulously whilst Margaret opened the orange envelope, for the faithful creature had seen the sudden dilation of her mistress's dark eyes, the whitening of her lips; had seen, too, how her hands shook as they unfolded the telegram.

"I don't understand it," Mrs. Stanforth whispered shakily, when her eyes had scanned the few words before her. "I don't know what it means—Elizabeth—but—I must go—I must go—at once."

The servant drew the flimsy paper from her trembling hands and read the message, shaking her head in bewilderment, as the sense of it penetrated to her brain.

"I'm sure I don't know what it means no more than you do, dearie," she said.

"Graystone.

"Come at once; prepare for surprise.

"MARION."