But that momentary glimpse was sufficient to give Martin Gurwood an idea. And when Alice raised her tear-blurred face, now stern with the expression of a set and determined purpose, he was to a certain extent prepared for her.

'You must take me to my husband,' she said quietly. 'I am grateful to you for coming here Mr.--'

'Gurwood--my name is Martin Gurwood.'

'I am grateful to you for coming here, Mr. Gurwood, and for the delicate manner in which you have performed your task. But now I wish to be taken to my husband. I have a right to make that claim, and I do so.'

'My dear madam,' said Martin Gurwood, in the same quiet tone, but with much more firmness than he had hitherto exhibited, 'I will not allow that you owe me the smallest obligation; but if you did, the way in which you could best repay me would be by exciting yourself as little as possible. Under these most painful circumstances, you must not give way, Mrs. Claxton; you must keep up as best you can, for the sake of his memory, for the sake of the child which he has left behind him.'

'Little Bell? the child who is playing in the garden, and who just now passed the window?'

'Yes, a fragile, fair, bright-looking mite.'

'Little Bell! She is not Mr. Claxton's child, sir, nor mine, but she is another living proof of John's goodness, and thoughtfulness, and care for others.' She rose from her seat as she spoke, and wandered in a purposeless manner to the window. 'So thoughtful, so unselfish, so generous,' she murmured. 'It is three years ago since little Bell first came here.'

'Indeed!' said Martin, delighted at the unexpected reprieve, and anxious to divert her thoughts as long as possible from the one dread subject. 'Indeed! And where did she come from?'

'From the workhouse,' said Alice, not looking at him, but gazing straight before her through the window, against which her forehead was pressed--'from the workhouse. It was John's doing that we brought her here--all John's doing. It was from Mr. Tomlinson, the clergyman,' she continued, in a low tone, and with a certain abrupt incoherence of manner, that we heard about it--such cold weather, with the snow lying deep in the fields. Mr. Tomlinson told us that they had found her lying against a haystack in one of Farmer Mullins's fields, half frozen, and with a baby at her breast. So thin, and pale, and delicate, she looked when we went down to see her lying in the workhouse bed. She had been starved as well as frozen, Mr. Broadbent said, and her cheeks were hollow, and there were great dark circles round her eyes. But she must have been pretty, O so pretty! Her chestnut hair was soft and delicate, and her poor thin hands, almost transparent, were white and well-shaped.'