from the prison. I was put in the prison,
because I was a thief. I was a thief, because my mother went on the
streets when I was quite a little girl. My mother went on the streets,
because the gentleman who was my father deserted her. There is no need
to tell such a common story as this, at any length. It is told quite
often enough in the newspapers.

"Lady Verinder was very kind to me, and Mr. Betteredge was very kind
to me. Those two, and the matron at the reformatory, are the only good
people I have ever met with in all my life. I might have got on in
my place--not happily--but I might have got on, if you had not come
visiting. I don't blame you, sir. It's my fault--all my fault.

"Do you remember when you came out on us from among the sand hills,
that morning, looking for Mr. Betteredge? You were like a prince in
a fairy-story. You were like a lover in a dream. You were the most
adorable human creature I had ever seen. Something that felt like the
happy life I had never led yet, leapt up in me at the instant I set eyes
on you. Don't laugh at this if you can help it. Oh, if I could only make
you feel how serious it is to ME!

"I went back to the house, and wrote your name and mine in my work-box,
and drew a true lovers' knot under them. Then, some devil--no, I ought
to say some good angel--whispered to me, 'Go and look in the glass.' The
glass told me--never mind what. I was too foolish to take the warning.
I went on getting fonder and fonder of you, just as if I was a lady in
your own rank of life, and the most beautiful creature your eyes ever
rested on. I tried--oh, dear, how I tried--to get you to look at me.
If you had known how I used to cry at night with the misery and the
mortification of your never taking any notice of me, you would have
pitied me perhaps, and have given me a look now and then to live on.

"It would have been no very kind look, perhaps, if you had known how
I hated Miss Rachel. I believe I found out you were in love with her,
before you knew it yourself. She used to give you roses to wear in your
button-hole. Ah, Mr. Franklin, you wore my roses oftener than either you
or she thought! The only comfort I had at that time, was putting my rose
secretly in your glass of water, in place of hers--and then throwing her
rose away.

"If she had been really as pretty as you thought her, I might have borne
it better. No; I believe I should have been more spiteful against her
still. Suppose you put