ere
whence you took me. With kindest regards and best wishes,

"I am,

"Yours ever gratefully,

"ESTHER ANSELL."

There were tears in Esther's eyes when she finished, and she was
penetrated with admiration of her own generosity in so freely admitting
Mrs. Goldsmith's and in allowing that her patron got nothing out of the
bargain. She was doubtful whether the sentence about the high sphere was
satirical or serious. People do not know what they mean almost as often
as they do not say it.

Esther put the letter into an envelope and placed it on the open
writing-desk she kept on her dressing-table. She then packed a few
toilette essentials in a little bag, together with some American
photographs of her brother and sisters in various stages of adolescence.
She was determined to go back empty-handed as she came, and was
reluctant to carry off the few sovereigns of pocket-money in her purse,
and hunted up a little gold locket she had received, while yet a
teacher, in celebration of the marriage of a communal magnate's
daughter. Thrown aside seven years ago, it now bade fair to be the
corner-stone of the temple; she had meditated pledging it and living on
the proceeds till she found work, but when she realized its puny
pretensions to cozen pawnbrokers, it flashed upon her that she could
always repay Mrs. Goldsmith the few pounds she was taking away. In a
drawer there was a heap of manuscript carefully locked away; she took it
and looked through it hurriedly, contemptuously. Some of it was music,
some poetry, the bulk prose. At last she threw it suddenly on the bright
fire which good Mary O'Reilly had providentially provided in her room;
then, as it flared up, stricken with remorse, she tried to pluck the
sheets from the flames; only by scorching her fingers and raising
blisters did she succeed, and then, with scornful resignation, she
instantly threw them back again, warming her feverish hands merrily at
the bonfire. Rapidly looking through all her drawers, lest perchance in
some stray manuscript she should leave her soul naked behind her, she
came upon a forgotten faded rose. The faint fragrance was charged with
strange memories of Sidney. The handsome young artist had given it her
in the earlier days of their acquaintanceship. To Esther to-night it
seemed to belong to a period infinitely more remote than her childhood.
When the shrivelled rose had been further crumpled into a little ball
and then pi