se of my lone years, till I have got
used to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has
always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then--to
pass away the time--whether no one ever owed any duty to me.

Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but
whether angrily or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physical
infirmity, did not appear.

'There was a child called Alice Marwood,' said the daughter, with a
laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself,
'born, among poverty and neglect, and nursed in it. Nobody taught her,
nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.'

'Nobody!' echoed the mother, pointing to herself, and striking her
breast.

'The only care she knew,' returned the daughter, 'was to be beaten, and
stinted, and abused sometimes; and she might have done better without
that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of
little wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this
childhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been hunted
and worried to death for ugliness.'

'Go on! go on!' exclaimed the mother.

'I am going on,' returned the daughter. 'There was a girl called Alice
Marwood. She was handsome. She was taught too late, and taught all
wrong. She was too well cared for, too well trained, too well helped on,
too much looked after. You were very fond of her--you were better off
then. What came to that girl comes to thousands every year. It was only
ruin, and she was born to it.'

'After all these years!' whined the old woman. 'My gal begins with
this.'

'She'll soon have ended,' said the daughter. 'There was a criminal
called Alice Marwood--a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And
she was tried, and she was sentenced. And lord, how the gentlemen in the
Court talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on
her having perverted the gifts of nature--as if he didn't know better
than anybody there, that they had been made curses to her!--and how he
preached about the strong arm of the Law--so very strong to save her,
when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch!--and how solemn and
religious it all was! I have thought of that, many times since, to be
sure!'

She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that
made the howl of the old woman musical.

'So Alice Marwood was transported, mother,' she pursue