“I’ll soon find it out, then,” he returned, playfully forcing the paper from her grasp.

“Don’t look at it, I entreat,” she cried.

But her request was unheeded.  Thames unfolded the drawing, smoothed out its creases, and beheld a portrait of himself.

“I’ve a good mind not to speak to you again, Sir!” cried Winifred, with difficulty repressing a tear of vexation; “you’ve acted unfairly.”

“I feel I have, dear Winny!” replied Thames, abashed at his own rudeness; “my conduct is inexcusable.”

“I’ll excuse it nevertheless,” returned the little damsel, affectionately extending her hand to him.

“Why were you afraid to show me this picture, Winny?” asked the youth.

“Because it’s not like you,” was her answer.

“Well, like or not, I’m greatly pleased with it, and must beg it from you as a memorial——­”

“Of what?” she interrupted, startled by his change of manner.

“Of yourself,” he replied, in a mournful tone.  “I shall value it highly, and will promise never to part with it.  Winny, this is the last night I shall pass beneath your father’s roof.”

“Have you told him so?” she inquired, reproachfully.  “No; but I shall, before he retires to rest.”

“Then you will stay!” she cried, clapping her hands joyfully, “for I’m sure he won’t part with you.  Oh! thank you—­thank you!  I’m so happy!”

“Stop, Winny!” he answered, gravely; “I haven’t promised yet.”

“But you will,—­won’t you?” she rejoined, looking him coaxingly in the face.

Unable to withstand this appeal, Thames gave the required promise, adding,—­“Oh!  Winny, I wish Mr. Wood had been my father, as well as yours.”

“So do I!” she cried; “for then you would have been really my brother.  No, I don’t, either; because——­”

“Well, Winny?”

“I don’t know what I was going to say,” she added, in some confusion; “only I’m sorry you were born a gentleman.”

“Perhaps, I wasn’t,” returned Thames, gloomily, as the remembrance of Jonathan Wild’s foul insinuation crossed him.  “But never mind who, or what I am.  Give me this picture.  I’ll keep it for your sake.”

“I’ll give you something better worth keeping,” she answered, detaching the ornament from her neck, and presenting it to him; “this contains a lock of my hair, and may remind you sometimes of your little sister.  As to the picture, I’ll keep it myself, though, if you do go I shall need no memorial of you.  I’d a good many things to say to you, besides—­but you’ve put them all out of my head.”

With this, she burst into tears, and sank with her face upon his shoulder.  Thames did not try to cheer her.  His own heart was too full of melancholy foreboding.  He felt that he might soon be separated—­perhaps, for ever—­from the fond little creature he held in his arms, whom he had always regarded with the warmest fraternal affection, and the thought of how much she would suffer from the separation so sensibly affected him, that he could not help joining in her grief.