‘God forgive me!’ said Mr Openshaw.

‘God forgive us all!’ said Norah.  ’Yon poor man needs forgiveness, perhaps, less than any one among us.  He had been among the savages—­shipwrecked—­I know not what—­and he had written letters which had never reached my poor missus.’

‘He saw his child!’

’He saw her—­yes!  I took him up, to give his thoughts another start; for I believed he was going mad on my hands.  I came to seek him here, as I more than half promised.  My mind misgave me when I heard he never came in.  Oh, sir, it must be him!’

Mr Openshaw rang the bell.  Norah was almost too much stunned to wonder at what he did.  He asked for writing materials, wrote a letter, and then said to Norah: 

’I am writing to Alice, to say I shall be unavoidably absent for a few days; that I have found you; that you are well, and send her your love, and will come home tomorrow.  You must go with me to the police court; you must identify the body; I will pay high to keep names and details out of the papers.’

‘But where are you going, sir?’

He did not answer her directly.  Then he said: 

’Norah!  I must go with you, and look on the face of the man whom I have so injured—­unwittingly, it is true; but it seems to me as if I had killed him.  I will lay his head in the grave as if he were my only brother:  and how he must have hated me!  I cannot go home to my wife till all that I can do for him is done.  Then I go with a dreadful secret on my mind.  I shall never speak of it again, after these days are over.  I know you will not, either.’  He shook hands with her; and they never named the subject again, the one to the other.

Norah went home to Alice the next day.  Not a word was said on the cause of her abrupt departure a day or two before.  Alice had been charged by her husband, in his letter, not to allude to the supposed theft of the brooch; so she, implicitly obedient to those whom she loved both by nature and habit, was entirely silent on the subject, only treated Norah with the most tender respect, as if to make up for unjust suspicion.

Nor did Alice inquire into the reason why Mr Openshaw had been absent during his uncle and aunt’s visit, after he had once said that it was unavoidable.  He came back grave and quiet; and from that time forth was curiously changed.  More thoughtful, and perhaps less active; quite as decided in conduct, but with new and different rules for the guidance of that conduct.  Towards Alice he could hardly be more kind than he had always been; but he now seemed to look upon her as someone sacred, and to be treated with reverence, as well as tenderness.  He throve in business, and made a large fortune, one half of which was settled upon her.

Long years after these events—­a few months after her mother died—­Ailsie and her ‘father’ (as she always called Mr Openshaw) drove to a cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a certain mound by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage.  There was a headstone, with F.W. and a date upon it.  That was all.  Sitting by the grave, Mr Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad fate of that poor father whom she had never seen, he shed the only tears she ever saw fall from his eyes.