this cloud over my own life. I rose to
my feet.

"I do not wish to ask for any favours from you," I said, "but I will ask
you to remember that if you are seen here I shall certainly lose my
post."

"What does it matter?" she answered contemptuously. "I am not a rich
woman, Guy, but I know how to earn money. Mostyn Ray would not believe
it, perhaps, but I loved your father. Yours has been a miserable little
life. Come with me, and I promise that I will show you how to make it
great. You have no relatives or any ties. I promise you that I will be
a model stepmother."

I looked at her, bewildered.

"It is not possible for me to do anything of the sort," I told her. "I
do not wish to seem unkind, but nothing in this world would induce me to
consider such a thing for a moment. I have chosen my life and the
manner of it. Do you think that I can ever forget that you and my
father between you broke my mother's heart, and made it necessary for me
to be brought up without friends, ashamed of my name and of my history?
One does not forget these things. I bear you no ill will, but I wish
that you would go away."

She sat there quite quietly, listening to me.

"Guy," she said, when I had finished, "all that you speak of happened
many years ago. There is forgiveness for everybody, isn't there? You
and I are almost alone in the world. I want to be your friend. You
might find me a more powerful one than you think. Try me! I will make
your future mine. You shall have your own way in all things. I know
the hills and the valleys of life, the underneath and the matchless
places. If you accept my offer you will never regret it. I can be a
faithful friend or a relentless enemy. Between you and me, Guy, there
can be no middle course. I want to be your friend. Don't make me your
enemy."

The woman puzzled me. She had every appearance of being in earnest.
Yet the things which she proposed were absurd.

"This is folly," I answered her. "I cannot count it anything else. Do
you suppose that I want to creep through life at a woman's
apron-strings? I am old enough, and strong enough, I hope, to think and
act for myself. My career is my own, to make or to mar. I do not wish
for enmity from any one, but your friendship I cannot accept. Our ways
lie apart--a long way apart."

"Do not be too sure of that," she said quietly. "I think that you and I
may come together again very soon, and it is possible that you may need
my help."

"All that