No one was ever so good to me as he was. If it
hadn't been for him I should have learned nothing, and father himself
would have been a dull, ignorant man. Mr. Roland learnt to talk to
father, and nobody else could talk with him but me. I used to think it
was as much like our Lord Jesus Christ as anything any one could do. Mr.
Roland could not open father's ears, but he learned how to talk to him,
to make him less lonely. That was the kindest thing any one on earth
could do."

"Do you believe Mr. Roland was innocent?" asked Mr. Clifford.

"I know he was guilty," answered Phebe sadly. "He told me all about it
himself, and I saw his sorrow. Before that he always seemed to me more
like what I think Jesus Christ was than any one else. He could never
think of himself while there were other people to care for. And I know,"
she went on, with simple sagacity, "that it was not Mr. Roland's sin
that fretted father, but the loss of the money. If he had made six
hundred pounds by using it without his consent, and said, 'Here,
Marlowe, are twelve hundred pounds for you instead of six; I did not put
your money up as you wanted, but used it instead;' why, father would
have praised him up to the skies, and could never have been grateful
enough."

Mr. Clifford's conscience smote him as he listened to Phebe's unworldly
comment on Roland Sefton's conduct. If Roland had met him with the
announcement of a gain of ten thousand pounds by a lucky though
unauthorized speculation, he knew very well his own feeling would have
been utterly different from that with which he had heard of the loss of
ten thousand pounds. The world itself would have cried out against him
if he had prosecuted a man by whose disregard of the laws he had gained
so large a profit. Was it, then, a simple love of justice that had
actuated him? Yet the breach of trust would have been the same.

"But if you will not come to live with me, my dear," he said, "what do
you propose to do? You cannot live alone in your old home."

"May I tell you what I should like to do?" she asked.

"Certainly," he answered. "I am bound to know it."

"Those two who are dead," she said, "thought so much of my painting.
Mr. Roland was always wishing I could go to a school of art, and father
said when he was gone he should wish it too. But now we have lost our
money, the next best thing will be for me to go to live as servant to
some great artist, where I could see something of painting till I