anything but the cravings of hunger. They conversed cheerfully
together; and while Helen rallied her cousin on her long absence. May
thought, more than once, with sad forebodings, of her encounter with
her uncle down town that morning. But she determined to keep her own
secrets; for she well knew that if he discovered it, he would forbid
her exertions in behalf of old Mabel, her visits, and be perhaps
furiously angry at the traffic she was carrying on with Mrs. Tabb.




CHAPTER V.

PAST AND PRESENT.

The day waned; and that soft, silent hour, which the Scotch so
beautifully call the "_gloaming_" was over the earth. Subdued shadows
crept in through the windows, and mingled with the red glow which the
fire-light diffused throughout the room, and together they formed a
phantasmagoria, which seemed to ebb and flow like a noiseless tide. And
with the shadows, memories of the past floated in, and knocked with their
spirit-hands softly and gently against the portals of those two hearts
which life's tempest had thrown together. Helen wept.

"Do you remember your mother, dear Helen?" asked May, while she folded
her hand in her own.

"No and yes. If it is a memory, it is so indistinct that it _seems_ like
a dream; and yet, how often at this hour does a vision come to my mind of
a dark-eyed, soft-voiced woman, holding kneeling child against her bosom,