ever possessed--in vulgar parlance, I am cleaned out, Mary Anne. But
other men have spent every sixpence belonging to them, and have
contrived to live pleasantly enough for half a century afterwards; and
I daresay I can do as they have done. If the wind is tempered to the
shorn lamb, I suppose the hawks and vultures take care of themselves. I
have tried my luck as a shorn lamb, and the tempest has been very
bitter for me; so I have no alternative but to join the vultures."

Mary Anne Kepp stared wonderingly at her mother's lodger. She had some
notion that he had been saying something wicked and blasphemous; but
she was too ignorant and too innocent to follow his meaning.

"O, pray don't talk in that wild way, sir," she entreated. "It makes me
so unhappy to hear you go on like that."

"And why should anything that I say make you unhappy, Mary Anne?" asked
the lodger earnestly.

There was something in his tone that set her pale face on fire with
unwonted crimson, and she bent very low over her work to hide those
painful blushes. She did not know that the Captain's tone presaged a
serious address; she did not know that the grand crisis of her life was
close upon her.

Horatio Paget had determined upon making a sacrifice. The doctor had
told him that he owed his life to this devoted girl; and he would have
been something less than man if he had not been moved with some
grateful emotion. He was grateful; and in the dreary hours of his slow
recovery he had ample leisure for the contemplation of the woman to
whom he owed so much, if his poor worthless life could indeed be much.