st daughter,
rang in his ears again as if they had just fallen from her lips. "She
may be lost in the labyrinth of London.... To-morrow, or ten years
hence, you _might_ meet with her." There were a hundred chances
against it--a thousand, ten thousand chances against it. The startling
possibility flashed across his brain, nevertheless, like a sudden
flow of daylight across the dark. _"Have_ I met with her, at the first
chance?"

"Wait," he cried; "I have something to say before you speak to me. Don't
deceive yourself with vain hopes. Promise me that, before I begin."

She waved her hand derisively. "Hopes?" she repeated; "I have done with
hopes, I have done with fears--I have got to certainties, at last!"

He was too eager to heed anything that she said to him; his whole soul
was absorbed in the coming disclosure. "Two nights since," he went on,
"I was wandering about London, and I met--"

She burst out laughing. "Go on!" she cried, with a wild derisive gaiety.

Amelius stopped, perplexed and startled. "What are you laughing at?" he
asked.

"Go on!" she repeated. "I defy you to surprise me. Out with it! Whom did
you meet?"

Amelius proceeded doubtfully, by a word at a time. "I met a poor girl in
the streets," he said, steadily watching her.

She changed completely at those words; she looked at him with an aspect
of stern reproach. "No more of it," she interposed; "I have not waited
all these miserable years for such a horrible end as that." Her face
suddenly brightened; a radiant effusion of tenderness and triumph flowed
over it, and made it young and happy again. "Amelius!" she said, "listen
to this. My dream has come true--my girl is found! Thanks to you, though
you don't know it."

Amelius looked at her. Was she speaking of something that had really
happened? or had she been dreaming again?

Absorbed in her own happiness, she made no remark on his silence. "I
have seen the woman," she went on. "This bright blessed morning I have
seen the woman who took her away in the first days of her poor little
life. The wretch swears she was not to blame. I tried to forgive her.
Perhaps I almost did forgive her, in the joy of hearing what she had
to tell me. I should never have heard it, Amelius, if you had not given
that glorious lecture. The woman was one of your audience. She would
never have spoken of those past days; she would never have thought of
me--"

At those words, Mrs. Farnaby abruptly stopped, and turned