I listened in silence and looked attentively at him.

“Your early recollection, my dear, will supply the gloomy medium through which all this was seen and expressed by the writer, and the distorted religion which clouded her mind with impressions of the need there was for the child to expiate an offence of which she was quite innocent.  I felt concerned for the little creature, in her darkened life, and replied to the letter.”

I took his hand and kissed it.

“It laid the injunction on me that I should never propose to see the writer, who had long been estranged from all intercourse with the world, but who would see a confidential agent if I would appoint one.  I accredited Mr. Kenge.  The lady said, of her own accord and not of his seeking, that her name was an assumed one.  That she was, if there were any ties of blood in such a case, the child’s aunt.  That more than this she would never (and he was well persuaded of the steadfastness of her resolution) for any human consideration disclose.  My dear, I have told you all.”

I held his hand for a little while in mine.

“I saw my ward oftener than she saw me,” he added, cheerily making light of it, “and I always knew she was beloved, useful, and happy.  She repays me twenty-thousandfold, and twenty more to that, every hour in every day!”

“And oftener still,” said I, “she blesses the guardian who is a father to her!”

At the word father, I saw his former trouble come into his face.  He subdued it as before, and it was gone in an instant; but it had been there and it had come so swiftly upon my words that I felt as if they had given him a shock.  I again inwardly repeated, wondering, “That I could readily understand.  None that I could readily understand!” No, it was true.  I did not understand it.  Not for many and many a day.

“Take a fatherly good night, my dear,” said he, kissing me on the forehead, “and so to rest.  These are late hours for working and thinking.  You do that for all of us, all day long, little housekeeper!”

I neither worked nor thought any more that night.  I opened my grateful heart to heaven in thankfulness for its providence to me and its care of me, and fell asleep.

We had a visitor next day.  Mr. Allan Woodcourt came.  He came to take leave of us; he had settled to do so beforehand.  He was going to China and to India as a surgeon on board ship.  He was to be away a long, long time.

I believe—­at least I know—­that he was not rich.  All his widowed mother could spare had been spent in qualifying him for his profession.  It was not lucrative to a young practitioner, with very little influence in London; and although he was, night and day, at the service of numbers of poor people and did wonders of gentleness and skill for them, he gained very little by it in money.  He was seven years older than I. Not that I need mention it, for it hardly seems to belong to anything.