“No, dear, I’m not tired—­but I’m glad to get back.”

“Did you find your old landlady still alive?”

“Yes.  But oh, so altered, poor thing!  The struggle for life must have been a hard one, since I last saw her.”

“She didn’t recognize you, of course?”

“Oh! no.  She looked at me and my dress in great surprise and said her lodgings were hardly fit for a young lady like me.  It was too sad.  I said I had known her lodgings well, many years ago—­and, with that to prepare her, I told her who I was.  Ah, it was a melancholy meeting for both of us.  She burst out crying when I kissed her; and I had to tell her that my mother was dead, and my brother lost to me in spite of every effort to find him.  I asked to go into the kitchen, thinking the change would be a relief to both of us.  The kitchen used to be a paradise to me in those old days; it was so warm to a half-starved child—­and I always got something to eat when I was there.  You have no idea, Herbert, how poor and how empty the place looked to me now.  I was glad to get out of it, and go upstairs.  There was a lumber-room at the top of the house; I used to play in it, all by myself.  More changes met me the moment I opened the door.”

“Changes for the better?”

“My dear, it couldn’t have changed for the worse!  My dirty old play-room was cleaned and repaired; the lumber taken away, and a nice little bed in one corner.  Some clerk in the City had taken the room—­I shouldn’t have known it again.  But there was another surprise waiting for me; a happy surprise this time.  In cleaning out the garret, what do you think the landlady found?  Try to guess.”

Anything to please her!  Anything to make her think that he was as fond of her as ever!  “Was it something you had left behind you,” he said, “at the time when you lodged there.”

“Yes! you are right at the first guess—­a little memorial of my father.  Only some torn crumpled leaves from a book of children’s songs that he used to teach me to sing; and a small packet of his letters, which my mother may have thrown aside and forgotten.  See!  I have brought them back with me; I mean to look over the letters at once—­but this doesn’t interest you?”

“Indeed it does.”

He made that considerate reply mechanically, as if thinking of something else.  She was afraid to tell him plainly that she saw this; but she could venture to say that he was not looking well.  “I have noticed it for some time past,” she confessed.  “You have been accustomed to live in the country; I am afraid London doesn’t agree with you.”

He admitted that she might be right; still speaking absently, still thinking of the Divorce.  She laid the packet of letters and the poor relics of the old song-book on the table, and bent over him.  Tenderly, and a little timidly, she put her arm around his neck.  “Let us try some purer air,” she suggested; “the seaside might do you good.  Don’t you think so?”