escaped from me. Let him go. All the kindly feeling I had for him--all
the hopes for his future welfare, all my secret plans to aid him--they
are dead. But it was all so sudden. Was it to-day, Fan, that I saw you
sitting in Kensington Gardens, crying by yourself, or a whole year ago?
Poor Fan! poor Fan!"

The girl had hid her face against Mary's knee.

"But why do you cry, my poor girl?"

"Oh, dear Mary, will you ever forgive me?" said Fan, half raising her
tearful face.

"Forgive you, Fan! For what?"

"For what I said to-day in the Gardens. Oh, why, why did I say such
dreadful things! Oh, I am so--so sorry--I am so sorry!"

"I remember now, but I had forgotten all about it. That was nothing, Fan
--less than nothing. It was not you that spoke, but the demon of anger
that had possession of you. I forgive you freely for that, poor child,
and shall never think of it again. But I shall never be able to feel
towards you as I did before. Never, Fan."

"Mary, Mary, what have I done!"

"Nothing, child. It is not anything you have done, or that you have left
undone. But I took you into my house and into my heart, and only asked
you to love and trust me, and you forgot it all in a moment, and were
ready to believe the worst of me. A stranger told you that I had secretly