“If that is so, I think I had better see her.  If she is the person I suspect her to be, she will know me; and a familiar face may bring back her recollections and put a stop to her wanderings.  If she does not know me, I will not stay talking with her.  I think she will, if she is the one I am seeking after.  There is no harm in trying.”

Mrs. Lindsay took a good long look at the old man.  There was no mistaking his grave, honest, sturdy, wrinkled, scholarly face.  His voice was assured and sincere in its tones.  His decent black coat was just what a scholar’s should be,—­old, not untidy, a little shiny at the elbows with much leaning on his study-table, but neatly bound at the cuffs, where worthy Mrs. Hopkins had detected signs of fatigue and come to the rescue.  His very hat looked honest as it lay on the table.  It had moulded itself to a broad, noble head, that held nothing but what was true and fair, with a few harmless crotchets just to fill in with, and it seemed to know it.

The good woman gave him her confidence at once.  “Is the person you are seeking a niece or other relative of yours?”

(Why did not she ask if the girl was his daughter?  What is that look of paternity and of maternity which observing and experienced mothers and old nurses know so well in men and in women?)

“No, she is not a relative.  But I am acting for those who are.”

“Wait a moment and I will go and see that the room is all right.”

She returned presently.  “Follow me softly, if you please.  She is asleep,—­so beautiful,—­so innocent!”

Byles Gridley, Master of Arts, retired professor, more than sixty years old, childless, loveless, stranded in a lonely study strewed with wrecks of the world’s thought, his work in life finished, his one literary venture gone down with all it held, with nobody to care for him but accidental acquaintances, moved gently to the side of the bed and looked upon the pallid, still features of Myrtle Hazard.  He strove hard against a strange feeling that was taking hold of him, that was making his face act rebelliously, and troubling his eyes with sudden films.  He made a brief stand against this invasion.  “A weakness,—­a weakness!” he said to himself.  “What does all this mean?  Never such a thing for these twenty years!  Poor child! poor child!—­Excuse me, madam,” he said, after a little interval, but for what offence he did not mention.  A great deal might be forgiven, even to a man as old as Byles Gridley, looking upon such a face,—­so lovely, yet so marked with the traces of recent suffering, and even now showing by its changes that she was struggling in some fearful dream.  Her forehead contracted, she started with a slight convulsive movement, and then her lips parted, and the cry escaped from them,—­how heart-breaking when there is none to answer it,—­“Mother!”

Gone back again through all the weary, chilling years of her girlhood to that hardly remembered morning of her life when the cry she uttered was answered by the light of loving eyes, the kiss of clinging lips, the embrace of caressing arms!