“My good girl, if you are Grace Harvey, you’re welcome to my roof and an honour to it, say I:  but as for taking all that money with you across the seas, and such a pretty helpless young thing as you are, God help you, it mustn’t be, and shan’t be, and that’s flat.”

“But I must go to him!” said she in so naive half-wild a fashion, that Mary, comprehending all, looked imploringly at her father, and putting her arm round Grace, forced her into a seat.

“I must go, sir, and tell him—­tell him myself.  No one knows what I know about it.”

Mark shook his head.

“Could I not write to him?  He knows me as well as he knows his own father.”

Grace shook her head, and pressed her hand upon her heart, where Tom’s belt lay.

“Do you think, madam, that after having had the dream of this belt, the shape of this belt, and of the money which is in it, branded into my brain for months—­years it seems like—­by God’s fire of shame and suspicion;—­and seen him poor, miserable, fretful, unbelieving, for the want of it—­O God!  I can’t tell even your sweet face all.—­Do you think that now I have it in my hands, I can part with it, or rest, till it is in his?  No, not though I walk barefoot after him to the ends of the earth.”

“Let his father have the money, then, and do you take him the belt as a token, if you must—­”

“That’s it, Mary!” shouted Mark Armsworth, “you always come in with the right hint, girl!” and the two, combining their forces, at last talked poor Grace over.  But upon going out herself she was bent.  To ask his forgiveness in her mother’s name, was her one fixed idea.  He might die, and not know all, not have forgiven all, and go she must.

“But it is a thousand to one against your seeing him.  We, even, don’t know exactly where he is gone.”

Grace shuddered a moment; and then recovered her calmness.

“I did not expect this:  but be it so.  I shall meet him if God wills; and if not, I can still work—­work.”

“I think, Mary, you’d better take the young woman upstairs, and make her sleep here to-night,” said Mark, glad of an excuse to get rid of them; which, when he had done, he pulled his chair round in front of the fire, put a foot on each hob, and began rubbing his eyes vigorously.

“Dear me!  Dear me!  What a lot of good people there are in this old world, to be sure!  Ten times better than me, at least—­make one ashamed of oneself:—­and if one isn’t even good enough for this world, how’s one to be good enough for heaven?”

And Mary carried Grace upstairs, and into her own bed-room.  A bed should be made up there for her.  It would do her good just to have anything so pretty sleeping in the same room.  And then she got Grace supper, and tried to make her talk:  but she was distrait, reserved; for a new and sudden dread had seized her, at the sight of that fine house, fine plate, fine friends.  These were his acquaintances,