There was one thing only that I could do, only one little sacrifice I could make for him whom I had vowed, in childish ignorance, to love, honor, and cherish in sickness and in health, until death parted us.  A home was secured to me for twelve months, and at the end of that time I should have a better career open to me.  I had enough money still to last me until then.  My diamond ring, which had been his own gift to me on our wedding-day, would be valuable to him.  Sixty pounds would be a help to him, if he were as poor as this child said.  He must be poor, or he would never have gone to live in that mean street and neighborhood.

Perhaps—­if he had been alone—­I do not know, but possibly if he had been quite alone, ill, dying in that poor lodging of his, I might have gone to him.  I ask myself again, could you have done this thing?  But I cannot answer it even to myself.  Poor and ill he was, but he was not alone.

It was enough for me, then, that I could do something, some little service for him.  The old flame of vengeance had no spark of heat left in it.  I was free from hatred of him.  I set the child gently away from me, and wrote my last letter to my husband.  Both the letter and the ring I enclosed in a little box.  These are the words I wrote, and I put neither date nor name of place: 

“I know that you are poor, and I send you all I can spare—­the ring you once gave to me.  I am even poorer than yourself, but I have just enough for my immediate wants.  I forgive you, as I trust God forgives me.”

I sat looking at it, thinking of it for some time.  There was a vague doubt somewhere in my mind that this might work some mischief.  But at last I decided that it should go.  I must register the packet at a post-office on our way to the station, and it could not fail to reach him.

This business settled, I returned to the child, who was sitting, as I had so often, done, gazing pensively into the fire.  Was she to be a sort of miniature copy of myself?

“Come, Minima,” I said, “we must be thinking of tea.  Which would you like best, buns, or cake, or bread-and-butter?  We must go out and buy them, and you shall choose.”

“Which would cost the most?” she asked, looking at me with the careworn expression of a woman.  The question sounded so oddly, coming from lips so young, that it grieved me.  How bitterly and heavily must the burden of poverty have already fallen upon this child!  I was almost afraid to think what it must mean.  I put my arm round her, pressing my cheek against hers, while childish visions, more childish than any in this little head, flitted before me, of pantomimes, and toys, and sweetmeats, and the thousand things that children love.  If I had been as rich as my father had planned for me to be, how I would have lavished them upon this anxious little creature!

We were discussing this question with befitting gravity, when a great thump against the door brought a host of fears upon me.  But before I could stir the insecure handle gave way, and no one more formidable appeared than the landlady of the house, carrying before her a tray on which was set out a sumptuous tea, consisting of buttered crumpets and shrimps.  She put it down on my dressing-table, and stood surveying it and us with an expression of benign exultation, until she had recovered her breath sufficiently to speak.