“I see,” nodded the editor sympathetically; “and very good it was of you, my man.”

Roberts looked still more confused, and stammered with a forced laugh, “And—­so—­I’m just keeping her on here, unbeknownst, until her husband gets”—­He stopped suddenly.

“So she has a husband living, then?” said Breeze in surprise.

“In the mines, yes—­in the mines!” repeated Roberts with a monotonous deliberation quite distinct from his previous hesitation, “and she’s only waitin’ until he gets money enough—­to—­to take her away.”  He stopped and breathed hard.

“But couldn’t you—­couldn’t we—­get her some more furniture?  There’s nothing in that room, you know, not a chair or table; and unless the other room is better furnished”—­

“Eh?  Oh, yes!” said Roberts quickly, yet still with a certain embarrassment; “of course that’s better furnished, and she’s quite satisfied, and so are the kids, with anything.  And now, Mr. Breeze, I reckon you’ll say nothin’ o’ this, and you’ll never go back on me?”

“My dear Mr. Roberts,” said the editor gravely, “from this moment I am not only blind, but deaf to the fact that anybody occupies this floor but myself.”

“I knew you was white all through, Mr. Breeze,” said the night watchman, grasping the young man’s hand with a grip of iron, “and I telled my wife so.  I sez, ‘Jest you let me tell him everythin’,’ but she”—­He stopped again and became confused.

“And she was quite right, I dare say,” said Breeze, with a laugh; “and I do not want to know anything.  And that poor woman must never know that I ever knew anything, either.  But you may tell your wife that when the mother is away she can bring the little ones in here whenever she likes.”

“Thank ye—­thank ye, sir!—­and I’ll just run down and tell the old woman now, and won’t intrude upon your dressin’ any longer.”

He grasped Breeze’s hand again, went out and closed the door behind him.  It might have been the editor’s fancy, but he thought there was a certain interval of silence outside the door before the night watchman’s heavy tread was heard along the hall again.

For several evenings after this Mr. Breeze paid some attention to the ballet in his usual round of the theatres.  Although he had never seen his fair neighbor, he had a vague idea that he might recognize her through some likeness to her children.  But in vain.  In the opulent charms of certain nymphs, and in the angular austerities of others, he failed equally to discern any of those refinements which might have distinguished the “born lady” of Roberts’s story, or which he himself had seen in her children.

These he did not meet again during the week, as his duties kept him late at the office; but from certain signs in his room he knew that Mrs. Roberts had availed herself of his invitation to bring them in with her, and he regularly found “Jinny’s” doll tucked up in his bed at night, and he as regularly disposed of it outside his door in the morning, with a few sweets, like an offering, tucked under its rigid arms.