per and the friend of the young lady--had not brought her into
bad odour with the servants. She was a favourite with them all, because
she gave herself no airs, and was always ready to lend a hand to help at
any time, disarming all jealousy by her unpretentious, willing, cheerful
ways. Gladys found her in the drawing-room, dusting the treasures of the
china cabinet.

'Oh, Teen, there is a letter about poor Lizzie at last!' she cried
breathlessly. 'It is from the Infirmary; the nurse says she is very ill,
perhaps dying, and she wishes to see me. You would like to go, I am
sure, and if we make haste we can get the eleven train.'

Teen very nearly dropped the Sevres vase she held in her hand in her
sheer surprise over this news.

'There is no time to talk. Make haste, if you wish to go; we must be off
in fifteen minutes,' cried Gladys, and ran off to her own room to make
ready for her journey, Miss Peck fussing about her as usual, anxious to
see that she forgot nothing which could protect her from the storm. It
was indeed a wild morning, a heavy rain scudding like drift before the
biting wind, and the sky thickly overcast with ink-black clouds; but
they drove off in a closed carriage, and took no hurt from the angry
elements. They did not speak much during the journey. In addition to her
natural excitement and concern for the poor lost girl, Gladys was also
possessed by a strange prevision that that day was to be a turning-point
in her history.

'Surely Walter will have seen his sister; he cannot have left Glasgow so
soon,' she said, as they drove from St. Enoch's Station, by way of the
old High Street, to the Infirmary. These streets, with their constant
stream of life, were all familiar to the eyes of Gladys. Many an hour in
the old days she had spent wandering their melancholy pavements,
scanning with a boundless and yearning pity the faces of the outcast and
the destitute, feeling no scorn of them or their surroundings, but only
a divine compassion, which had betrayed itself in her sweet face and
shining, earnest eyes, and had arrested many a rude stare, and awakened
a vague wonder in many a hardened breast. She was not less compasionate
now, only a degree more hopeless. Since she had been so far removed from
the sins and sorrows, the degradations and grinding poverty of the great
city, she had, while not thinking less seriously or sympathetically of
it all, felt oppressed by the impotence of those standing on the o