"One of the few cases where I had the chance to be kind." Why, Rachel
Pitstone's life had been one continuous selfless offering to God and man,
from her childhood to her last hour! He knew very well what he had owed
her--what others had owed--to her genius for sympathy, for understanding,
for a compassion which was also a stimulus. He missed her sorely. At that
very moment, he was in great practical need of her help, her guidance.

Whereas it was _he_--worse luck!--who must be the stumbling and
unwelcomed guide of Rachel's child! How, in the name of mystery, had the
child grown up so different from the mother? Well, impatience wouldn't
help him--he must set his mind to it. That scoundrel, Jim Donald!




CHAPTER IV


Mrs. Friend passed a somewhat wakeful night after the scene in which
Helena Pitstone had bestowed her first confidences on her new companion.
For Lucy Friend the experience had been unprecedented and agitating. She
had lived in a world where men and women do not talk much about
themselves, and as a rule instinctively avoid thinking much about
themselves, as a habit tending to something they call "morbid." This at
least had been the tone in her parents' house. The old woman in Lancaster
Gate had not been capable either of talking or thinking about herself,
except as a fretful animal with certain simple bodily wants. In Helena,
Lucy Friend had for the first time come cross the type of which the world
is now full--men and women, but especially women, who have no use any
longer for the reticence of the past, who desire to know all they