er, when she was five-and-twenty."

Mrs. Goldstraw thanked him with a movement of the head for being at the
pains to explain the picture, and said, with a cleared brow, that it was
the portrait of a very beautiful lady.

Mr. Wilding, falling back into his former perplexity, tried once more to
recover that lost recollection, associated so closely, and yet so
undiscoverably, with his new housekeeper's voice and manner.

"Excuse my asking you a question which has nothing to do with me or my
breakfast," he said. "May I inquire if you have ever occupied any other
situation than the situation of housekeeper?"

"O yes, sir. I began life as one of the nurses at the Foundling."

"Why, that's it!" cried the wine-merchant, pushing back his chair. "By
heaven! Their manner is the manner you remind me of!"

In an astonished look at him, Mrs. Goldstraw changed colour, checked
herself, turned her eyes upon the ground, and sat still and silent.

"What is the matter?" asked Mr. Wilding.

"Do I understand that you were in the Foundling, sir?"

"Certainly. I am not ashamed to own it."

"Under the name you now bear?"

"Under the name of Walter Wilding."

"And the lady--?" Mrs. Goldstraw stopped short with a look at the
portrait which was now unmistakably a look of alarm.

"You mean my mother," interrupted Mr. Wilding.

"Your--mother," repeated the housekeeper, a little constrainedly,
"removed you from the Foundling? At what age, sir?"

"At between eleven and twelve years old. It's quite a romantic
adventure, Mrs. Goldstraw."

He told the story of the lady having spoken to him, while he sat at
dinner with the other boys in the Foundling, and of all that had followed
in his innocently communicative way. "My poor mother could never have
discovered me," he added, "if she had not met with one of the matrons who
pitied her. The matron consented to touch the boy whose name was 'Walter
Wilding' as she went round the dinner-tables--and so my mother discovered
me again, after having parted from me as an infant at the Foundling
doors."

At those words Mrs. Goldstraw's hand, resting on the table, dropped
helplessly into her lap. She sat, looking at her new master, with a face
that had turned deadly pale, and with eyes that expressed an unutterable
dismay.

"What does this mean?" asked the wine-merchant. "Stop!" he cried. "Is
there something else in the past time which I ought to associate with
you? I remember my mothe