"And to-morrow Mr. Breagh will find poor Miss Morency's room swept and scrubbed and got ready for him," said Miss Ling that evening, during Mr. Knewbit's absence. "And the rent is—including Kitchen Board with myself and Mr. Knewbit, who likes homeliness, sixteen shillings per week. And if I trust Mr. Breagh for a month—that will be a chance for him of getting work to do. And that he will turn from nothing that will bring him in an honest living, I am certain; and that he will justify the confidence of Mr. Knewbit, I am equally sure!"
Said P. C. Breagh, rather chokily:
"I hope to God I may one day be able to thank you both as I should like to! You don't know what you have done for me, either of you! But I will—will repay you, I swear!"
She said in her quaint way:
"What obligation there may be could be repaid now—with Mr. Breagh's permission. He saw that most unhappy girl to-day.... He has seen a-many—many like her! If he would promise me—never to bring about a fall like that, or help to drag a head so fallen, lower! Perhaps I take a liberty," said Miss Ling, "and presume, being almost a stranger.... Yet I ask it of Mr. Breagh, I do indeed!"
He gave the promise, in words that were broken and hurried, and with eyes that shunned her plain, kind, earnest face. She said:
"There will be a beautiful young lady, one of these days, all the happier for that promise Mr. Breagh has given. And I hope he won't think me unjust—because I am a woman! and blind to the wreck and ruin that my sex can bring about. I knew a young man, once; who was good, and honest, and worthy; and engaged to marry a young person of his own rank in life...."
Carolan remembered Mr. Knewbit's story of the faithless underbutler.
"He went Abroad to Foreign Countries," said Miss Ling, mildly, "sailing on a ship that voyaged for months at a time. I am told that the women are very beautiful in the islands that he visited; and somehow or another, he was led away...."
Though she looked at Carolan, her regard was curiously impersonal. It was as though she saw the wraith of some face once dear, and although changed, never to be forgotten, appear within the outlines of the face that looked back at her.