her once, and the baby once, and then crept out of the room. The
dining-room door was open, and the old man was nodding over his paper.
He looked up as he heard my step in the passage, and asked me where I
was going. 'To have a smoke in the street,' I answered; and as this was
a common habit of mine he believed me. Three nights after I was out at
sea, bound for Melbourne--a steerage passenger, with a digger's tools
for my baggage, and about seven shillings in my pocket."

"And you succeeded?" asked Miss Morley.

"Not till I had long despaired of success; not until poverty and I had
become such old companions and bed-fellows, that looking back at my past
life, I wondered whether that dashing, reckless, extravagant, luxurious,
champagne-drinking dragoon could have really been the same man who sat
on the damp ground gnawing a moldy crust in the wilds of the new world.
I clung to the memory of my darling, and the trust that I had in her
love and truth was the one keystone that kept the fabric of my past life
together--the one star that lit the thick black darkness of the future.
I was hail-fellow-well-met with bad men; I was in the center of riot,
drunkenness, and debauchery; but the purifying influence of my love kept
me safe from all. Thin and gaunt, the half-starved shadow of what I once
had been, I saw myself one day in a broken bit of looking-glass, and was
frightened by my own face. But I toiled on through all; through
disappointment and despair, rheumatism, fever, starvation; at the very
gates of death, I toiled on steadily to the end; and in the end I
conquered."

He was so brave in his energy and determination, in his proud triumph of
success, and in the knowledge of the difficulties he had vanquished,
that the pale governess could only look at him in wondering admiration.