"I do not know—I cannot tell. He rends me to pieces, and I hate myself and him. I want your present badly, Lenny, and yet—and yet I long to compel you to take back your gift."
"Darling," answered Mrs. Werner, "though you are a mother, you never knew what it was to have a mother to love you. Fancy, for a moment I am your mother, saying, 'Dolly, keep it.' Could not that reconcile you, love. And some day it may be I or one belonging to me shall in bitter strait need your help; you would not then like to remember you had refused in your trouble to be assisted by one of us. You would not wish now to place a barrier between yourself and any one belonging to me who might hereafter ask your aid."
"No," Dolly answered slowly. "I should not. It may be—impossible as it now seems—that one of your children, or even you yourself, Leonora, might hereafter stand in need of such comfort as I could give; and just as surely as I take your present to-night, I will return your goodness then. In the words of The Book, 'May God do so to me and more if ever for ever I forget you and yours.'"
"Thank you, Dolly, it is a good vow for Christmas Eve. Good-bye dear, do not come out with me."
For reply, Dolly folding a shawl around her walked along the Grove and to the cross road where Mr. Werner's carriage was waiting.
"You ought not to be out in this damp night air," said Mrs. Werner.
But Dolly only shook her head. The footman banged the door, the coachman touched his horses, Mrs. Werner put down the window and waved her hand, and Dolly returned to the small house all alone. There, expecting perhaps to find a ten-pound note in the silken folds of the new purse, she opened Mrs. Werner's present; but, behold! it was no bank-note which her fingers discovered, but a slip of paper on which was written,
"Pay to Mrs. Werner or order one hundred pounds," and on the back a signature, that of "Leonora Werner."