“If you send me away, ma’am,” she said, “I won’t take my character from you till I have told you the truth; I won’t return your kindness by deceiving you a second time.  Did my master ever tell you how he engaged me?”

“No.  I never asked him, and he never told me.”

“He engaged me, ma’am, with a written character—­”

“Yes?”

“The character was a false one.”

Magdalen drew back in amazement.  The confession she heard was not the confession she had anticipated.

“Did your mistress refuse to give you a character?” she asked.  “Why?”

Louisa dropped on her knees and hid her face in her mistress’s lap.  “Don’t ask me!” she said.  “I’m a miserable, degraded creature; I’m not fit to be in the same room with you!” Magdalen bent over her, and whispered a question in her ear.  Louisa whispered back the one sad word of reply.

“Has he deserted you?” asked Magdalen, after waiting a moment, and thinking first.

“No.”

“Do you love him?”

“Dearly.”

The remembrance of her own loveless marriage stung Magdalen to the quick.

“For God’s sake, don’t kneel to me!” she cried, passionately.  “If there is a degraded woman in this room, I am the woman—­not you!”

She raised the girl by main force from her knees, and put her back in the chair.  They both waited a little in silence.  Keeping her hand on Louisa’s shoulder, Magdalen seated herself again, and looked with unutterable bitterness of sorrow into the dying fire.  “Oh,” she thought, “what happy women there are in the world!  Wives who love their husbands!  Mothers who are not ashamed to own their children!  Are you quieter?” she asked, gently addressing Louisa once more.  “Can you answer me, if I ask you something else?  Where is the child?”

“The child is out at nurse.”

“Does the father help to support it?”

“He does all he can, ma’am.”

“What is he?  Is he in service?  Is he in a trade?”

“His father is a master-carpenter—­he works in his father’s yard.”

“If he has got work, why has he not married you?”

“It is his father’s fault, ma’am—­not his.  His father has no pity on us.  He would be turned out of house and home if he married me.”

“Can he get no work elsewhere?”

“It’s hard to get good work in London, ma’am.  There are so many in London—­they take the bread out of each other’s mouths.  If we had only had the money to emigrate, he would have married me long since.”

“Would he marry you if you had the money now?”

“I am sure he would, ma’am.  He could get plenty of work in Australia, and double and treble the wages he gets here.  He is trying hard, and I am trying hard, to save a little toward it—­I put by all I can spare from my child.  But it is so little!  If we live for years to come, there seems no hope for us.  I know I have done wrong every way—­I know I don’t deserve to be happy.  But how could I let my child suffer?—­I was obliged to go to service.  My mistress was hard on me, and my health broke down in trying to live by my needle.  I would never have deceived anybody by a false character, if there had been another chance for me.  I was alone and helpless, ma’am; and I can only ask you to forgive me.”