It was the month of November, and very early that grey day the chilly
darkness fell. When she could no longer see across the narrow street,
Gladys let her head fall on her hands, and so sat very still. She had
eaten nothing for many hours, and though feeling faint and weak, it did
not occur to her to seek something to strengthen her. She had something
more important than such trifling matters to engross her thoughts. She
was so sitting, hopeless, melancholy, half-dazed, when she heard the
voice of an arrival down-stairs, and the unaccustomed tones of a man's
voice mingling with the shriller notes of Miss Peck, their little
landlady. It was not the curate's voice, with which Gladys had grown
quite familiar during her father's illness. He had been very kind; and
in his desperation, when his end approached, Graham had implored him to
look after Gladys. It was a curious charge to lay upon a young man's
shoulders, but Clement Courtney had accepted it cheerfully, and had even
written to his widowed mother, who lived alone in a Dorsetshire village,
asking her advice about the girl. Gladys was disturbed in her solitude
by Miss Peck, who came to the door in rather an excited and officious
manner. She was a little, wiry spinster, past middle life, eccentric,
but kind-hearted. She had bestowed a great deal of gratuitous and
genuine kindness on her lodgers, though knowing very well that she would
not likely get any return but gratitude for it; but times were hard with
her likewise, and she could not help thinking regretfully at times of
the money, only her due, which she would not likely touch now that the
poor artist was gone. She had a little lamp in her hand, and she held it
up so that the light fell full on the child's pale face.

'Miss Gladys, my dear, it is a gentleman for you. He says he is your
uncle,' she said, and her thin voice quite trembled with her great
excitement.