"Dear Friend.—Thank you a thousand times for your kindness to a poor friendless girl. I have found a good place with a lady, so I send you back what you so generously lent me. God bless you, dear friend.
"Believe me, Yours gratefully,
"MARY GRIMM."
For the first time in his life, Hudson knew what it was to be bitterly disappointed and angry on receiving back money that he had lent.
CHAPTER VII.
THE TENTH PLAGUE OF EGYPT.
Two years have gone by and Mary is still living with Catherine King. She is taller than she was, and of perfect figure. Her face seems less sad than before. Her mouth has lost much of its hardness, but perhaps her eyes have not got all their old pathos, their look that besought sympathy. There is a strange thoughtfulness in her expression. It is a face calm and inscrutable—a face more beautiful than ever.
She is not dressed shabbily now, but in a well-fitting though simple dress. She is delicately shod, and her hair is no longer cut in a fringe, but the glorious auburn mass is tied up behind in a neat knot that sets off to advantage the well-shaped head. She forms altogether as delicious a picture as the eye of man could dwell on.
Her education has been progressing all this time under the tuition of Catherine King; and never was a girl so curiously educated. Her mind was fed solely on such food as Logic, Compte's "Religion of Humanity," and what her teacher was wont to rather sarcastically call "Our Political Economy," for it was not the orthodox science of Mill and Fawcett, but the wild revolutionary doctrines of the Socialists, and of such apostles of Land Nationalization as Mr. George and his crew.