much the more because of his poverty and loneliness. That such a man
should be forgotten and deserted--that such a man should be poor and
lonely, seemed so cruel a chance to the simple maiden: and then when
illness overtook him, and invested him with a supreme claim upon her
tenderness and pity,--then the innocent girl lavished all the treasures
of a compassionate heart upon the ruined gentleman. She had no thought
of fee or reward; she knew that her mother's lodger was miserably poor,
and that his payments had become more and more irregular week by week
and month by month. She had no consciousness of the depth of feeling
that rendered her so gentle a nurse; for her life was a busy one, and
she had neither time nor inclination for any morbid brooding upon her
own feelings.

She protested warmly against the Captain's lamentation respecting his
age.

"The idear of any gentleman calling hisself old at fifty!" she said--
and Horatio shuddered at the supererogatory "r" and the "hisself,"
though they proceeded from the lips of his consoler;--"you've got
many, many years before you yet, sir, please God," she added piously;
"and there's good friends will come forward yet to help you, I make no
doubt."

Captain Paget shook his head peevishly.

"You talk as if you were telling my fortune with a pack of cards," he
said. "No, my girl, I shall have only one friend to rely upon, if ever
I am well enough to go outside this house; and that friend is myself. I
have spent the fortune my father left me; I have spent the price of my
commission; and I have parted with every object of any value that I