Mrs. Fordyce saw that she was firm.  She looked at her in wonder, noting with practised eyes the neat refinement of her poor dress, her sweet grace and delicate beauty.  To find a creature so fair in such a place was like coming suddenly on a pure flower blooming in a stony street.

’Your position is very lonely, but you will not find yourself without friends.  We must respect your wish to remain here, though the thought will make me unhappy to-night,’ said the kind woman.  ’You will promise to come to us immediately all is over?’

’If you still wish it; only there is poor Walter.  It will be so dreadful for me to leave him quite alone.’

Mrs. Fordyce could not restrain a smile.  The child-heart still dwelt in Gladys, though she was almost a woman grown.

’Ah, my dear, you know nothing of the world.  It is like reading a fairy story to look at you and hear you speak.  I hope—­I hope the world will not spoil you.’

‘Why should it spoil me?  I can never know it except from you,’ she said simply.

Mrs. Fordyce looked round the large, dimly-lighted place with eyes in which a wonder of pity lay.

’My child, is it possible that you have lived here almost two years, as my husband tells me, with no companion but an old man and a working lad?’

‘I have been quite happy,’ Gladys replied, with a slight touch of dignity not lost upon the lawyer’s wife.

’Perhaps because you knew nothing else.  We will show you what life can hold for such as you,’ she answered kindly; and there came a day when Gladys reminded her of these words in the bitterness of a wounded heart.

When her visitor left, Gladys ran up-stairs to Walter.  They had so long depended on each other for solace and sympathy, that it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to share this new experience with him.

‘You heard the lady speaking, did you not, Walter?’ she asked breathlessly.  ’It was Mr. Fordyce’s wife; she is so beautiful and so kind.  Just think, she would have taken me away with her in her carriage.’

‘And why didn’t you go?’ asked Walter in a dull, even voice, and without appearing in the least interested.

‘Oh because I could not leave just now,’ she said slowly, quite conscious of a change in his voice and look.

‘But you will go, I suppose, after?’

‘I suppose so.  They seem to wish it very much.’

’And you want to go, of course.  They are very grand West End swells.  I know their house—­a big mansion looking over the Kelvin,’ he said, not bitterly, but in the same even, indifferent voice.

’I don’t know anything about them.  If that is true, it is still kinder of them to think of such a poor girl as I.’

To the astonishment of Gladys, Walter broke into a laugh, not a particularly pleasant one.

‘Six months after this you’ll maybe take a different view,’ he said shortly.