Dutton
to help you too. I was so glad to find he was so near you.'

'Oh, Mr. Dutton!' exclaimed Ursula, in a strange tone that sent a
thrill through Mary, though she knew not why; but at that moment they
were interrupted, very inopportunely, by Mr. Bulfinch, who could not go
away without asking Miss Egremont whether she thought her father could
see him on business if he came up to town the next day. She thought
that such an interview would rouse her father and do him good, advising
him to call on the chance.

Mark's tete-a-tete had been with his sister May, to whom he had much to
tell of his wife and her gallant patience and energy, and how curious
it was that now the incubus that had weighed on his uncle's household
was removed, the prejudice had melted away, and he had grown so fond of
her that, next to Ursula, she was his best comforter.

'I hope that will lead to more,' said May.

'I don't see how,' said Mark. The more we rely only on a blessing on
our own exertions the better.'

'Even when Annaple works within an inch of her life?'

'Now that she is on a right tack about the baby, that will be easier.
Yes, May, I do feel sometimes that I have brought her down to drudgery
and narrowness and want of variety such as was never meant for her, but
she will never let me think so. She says that it is living in
realities, and that it makes her happier than toiling after society, or
rather after the world, and I do believe it is true! I'm sure it is
with me.'

'But such work as yours, Mark.'

'Nonsense, May; I enjoy it. I did not when I was in the Greenleaf
firm, with an undeveloped sense that Goodenough was not to be trusted,
and we were drifting to the bad, yet too green to understand or hinder
it; but this I thoroughly like. What does one want but honest
effective work, with some power of dealing with and helping those good
fellows, the hands, to see the right and help themselves?'

May sighed. 'And yet, now that poor child is gone, I feel all the more
how hard it is that you should be put out of the rights of your name.'

'I never had any rights. It was the bane of my life to be supposed to
have them. Nothing but this could have made a man of me.'

'And don't you have regrets for your boy?'

'I don't think I have--provided we can give him an education--such as I
failed to make proper use of, or Annaple might be luxuriating at Pera
at this moment.'

'Well!' said May, pausing as she looked up the