me.

"'I can give you nothing but thanks and blessings,' she said, 'for I am
the most helpless creature in this world. I suppose my husband will come
here before I die, and will relieve you from the risk you have taken for
me; but he can never repay you for your goodness.'

"I told her to give herself no trouble on my account; but I could not
help saying, that I thought her husband had behaved shamefully in not
coming to England to her long ere this.

"'He knows that you are ill, I suppose?' I said.

"'O yes, he knows that. I was ill when he sent me home. We had been
travelling about the Continent almost ever since our marriage. He married
me against his father's will, and lost all chance of a great fortune by
doing so. I did not know how much he sacrificed at the time, or I should
never have consented to his losing so much for my sake. I think the
knowledge of what he had lost came between us very soon. I know that his
love for me has grown weaker as the years went by, and that I have been
little better than a burden to him. I could never tell you how lonely my
life has been in those great foreign cities, where there seems such
perpetual gaiety and pleasure. I think I must have died of the solitude
and dulness--the long dreary summer evenings, the dismal winter days--if
it had not been for my darling child. She has been all the world to me.
And, O God!' she cried, with a look of anguish that went to my heart,
'what will become of her when I am dead, and she is left to the care of a
selfish dissipated man?'

"'You need never fear that she will be without one friend while I live,'