be a help to
him, if he were as poor as this child said. He must be poor, or he would
never have gone to live in that mean street and neighborhood.

Perhaps--if he had been alone--I do not know, but possibly if he had
been quite alone, ill, dying in that poor lodging of his, I might have
gone to him. I ask myself again, could you have done this thing? But I
cannot answer it even to myself. Poor and ill he was, but he was not
alone.

It was enough for me, then, that I could do something, some little
service for him. The old flame of vengeance had no spark of heat left in
it. I was free from hatred of him. I set the child gently away from me,
and wrote my last letter to my husband. Both the letter and the ring I
enclosed in a little box. These are the words I wrote, and I put neither
date nor name of place:

"I know that you are poor, and I send you all I can spare--the ring you
once gave to me. I am even poorer than yourself, but I have just enough
for my immediate wants. I forgive you, as I trust God forgives me."

I sat looking at it, thinking of it for some time. There was a vague
doubt somewhere in my mind that this might work some mischief. But at
last I decided that it should go. I must register the packet at a
post-office on our way to the station, and it could not fail to reach
him.

This business settled, I returned to the child, who was sitting, as I
had so often, done, gazing pensively into the fire. Was she to be a sort
of miniature copy of myself?

"Come, Minima," I said, "we must be thinking of tea. Which would you
like best, buns, or cake, or bread-and-butter? We must go out and buy
them, and you shall choose."

"Which would cost the most?" she asked, looking at me with the careworn
expression of a woman. The question sounded so oddly, coming from lips
so young, that it grieved me. How bitterly and heavily must the burden
of poverty have already fallen upon this child! I was almost afraid to
think what it must mean. I put my arm round her, pressing my cheek
against hers, while childish visions, more childish than any in this
little head, flitted before me, of pantomimes, and toys, and sweetmeats,
and the thousand things that children love. If I had been as rich as my
father had planned for me to be, how I would have lavished them upon
this anxious little creature!

We were discussing this question with befitting gravity, when a great
thump against the door brought a host of fears upon me. But bef