g on the sofa in the back parlor--and she received him there.
When he came out, he patted me on the cheek. "I have taken a fancy to
you," he said, "and perhaps I shall come back again." He did come back
again. My mother had referred him to the rector for our characters in
the town, and he had heard what our clergyman could say for us. Our only
relations had emigrated to Australia, and were not doing well there.
My mother's death would leave me, so far as relatives were concerned,
literally alone in the world. "Give this girl a first-rate education,"
said our elderly customer, sitting at our tea-table in the back parlor,
"and she will do. If you will send her to school, ma'am, I'll pay for
her education." My poor mother began to cry at the prospect of parting
with me. The old gentleman said: "Think of it," and got up to go.
He gave me his card as I opened the shop-door for him. "If you find
yourself in trouble," he whispered, so that my mother could not hear
him, "be a wise child, and write and tell me of it." I looked at the
card. Our kind-hearted customer was no less a person than Sir Gervase
Damian, of Garrum Park, Sussex--with landed property in our county as
well! He had made himself (through the rector, no doubt) far better
acquainted than I was with the true state of my mother's health. In four
months from the memorable day when the great man had taken tea with us,
my time had come to be alone in the world. I have no courage to dwell
on it; my spirits sink, even at this distance of time, when I think of
myself in those days. The good rector helped me with his advice--I wrote
to Sir Gervase Damian.

A change had come over his life as well as mine in the interval since we
had met.

Sir Gervase had married for the second time--and, what was more foolish
still, perhaps, at his age, had married a young woman. She was said
to be consumptive, and of a jealous temper as well. Her husband's only
child by his first wife, a son and heir, was so angry at his father's
second marriage that he left the house. The landed property being
entailed, Sir Gervase could only express his sense of his son's conduct
by making a new will, which left all his property in money to his young
wife.

These particulars I gathered from the steward, who was expressly sent to
visit me at Sandwich.

"Sir Gervase never makes a promise without keeping it," this gentleman
informed me. "I am directed to take you to a first-rate ladies'
school in the