She moved over to his side.  Her eyes and tone were full of appeal.  She sat close to him, her long white fingers nervously interlocked.

“I am afraid of you.  More afraid than ever to-day,” she murmured.  “You look stern, and I don’t understand why you have come.”

“To see you, Hester,” he answered, with a sudden impulse of kindness.

“Ah, no!” she interrupted, choking back a little sob.  “We both know so well that it is not that.  It is pity which brings you, pity and nothing else.  You know very well what a difference it makes to me.  If I have your work to do, and a letter sometimes, and see you now and then, I can bear everything.  But it is not easy.  It is never easy!”

“Of course it is not,” he assented.  “Hester, have you thought over what I said to you last time I was here?”

She shook her head.

“What is the use of thinking?” she asked, quietly.  “I could not leave her.”

“You mean that she would not let you go?” Mannering asked.

“No!  It is not that,” the girl answered.  “Sometimes I think that she would be glad.  It is not that.”

He nodded gravely.

“I understand.  But—­”

“If you understand, please do not say any more.”

“But I must, Hester,” he persisted.  “There is no one else to give you advice.  I know all that you can tell me, and I say that this is no fitting home for you.  Your mother’s friends are not fit friends for you.  She has chosen her way in life, and she will not brook any interference.  You can do no good by remaining with her.  On the contrary, you are doing yourself a great deal of harm.  I am old enough to be your father, child.  Wise enough, I hope, to be your adviser.  You shall be my secretary, and come and live at Blakely.”

A faint flush stole into her anaemic.  One realized then that under different conditions she might have been pretty.  Her face was no longer expressionless.

“You are so kind,” she said, softly.  “I shall always like to think of this.  And yet—­it is impossible.”

“Why?”

She hesitated.

“It is difficult to explain,” she said.  “But my being here makes a difference.  I found it out once when I went away for a week.  Some of—­of mother’s friends came to the house then whom she will not have when I am here.  If I were away altogether—­oh, I can’t explain, but I would not dare to go.”

Mannering seemed to have much to say—­and said nothing.  This queer, pale-faced girl, with her earnest eyes and few simple words, had silenced him.  She was right—­right at least from her own point of view.  A certain sense of shame suddenly oppressed him.  He was acutely conscious of his only half-admitted reason for this visit.  He had argued for himself.  It was his own passionate desire to free himself from associations that were little short of loathsome which had prompted this visit.  And then what he had dreaded most of all happened.  As they sat facing one another in the silent, half-darkened room, Mannering trying to bring himself into accord with half-admitted but repugnant convictions, she watching him hopelessly, the tinkle of a hansom bell sounded outside.  The sudden stopping of a horse, the rattle of a latchkey, and she was in the room.  Mannering rose to his feet with a little exclamation.