"Mr. Fletcher!" She looked up at him, with a mingled look of kindliness and pain.
"Ay, Phineas is a little less beneath your notice than I am. He is rich, and has been well educated; I have had to educate myself. I came to Norton Bury six years ago--a beggar-boy. No, not quite so bad as that, for I never begged. I either worked or starved."
The earnestness, the passion of his tone made Miss March lift her eyes, but they fell again.
"Yes, Phineas found me starving in an alley. We stood in the rain opposite the mayor's house. A little girl--you know her, Miss March--came to the door and threw out to me a bit of bread."
Now indeed she started. "You! Was that you?"
John paused, and his whole manner changed into softness as he resumed.
"I never forgot that little girl. Many a time when I was inclined to do wrong, she kept me right--the remembrance of her sweet face and her kindness."
That face was pressed against the sofa where she sat. Miss March was all but weeping.
"I am glad to have met her again," he went on, "and glad to have been able to do her some small good in return for the infinite good she once did me. I shall bid her farewell now, at once, and altogether."
A quick, involuntary turn of the hidden face seemed to ask him "Why?"