“Barbara, I treasured every word my mother said—I was so glad all the while to think of Richard as the head of the family, even if he was, like Arthur and me, not a legitimate son of sir Wilton. I could not help thinking that I belonged to a real family, for was not the same blood in Richard and in us?

“But as much as I loved Richard and wanted him as my brother, I never wanted to interfere in his family. I remembered what his mother had said to me. He didn’t know the shame of his beginnings, and so I tried to stay away from him, as his mother insisted. I met him one night in Regent Street, a terrible, stormy night, and was so flustered at seeing him, and so frightened that I might let something out that might injure him, that I treated him terribly and made him leave me alone. I had to be cruel to him, and he must have thought me awful. And now for him to appear, far away from everywhere, just in time to save me from dying of cold and hunger—isn’t it wonderful?”

Barbara sat silent. It was her turn to sit thinking. Why had the strange story come to her ears? There must be something for her to do in the next chapter of it!

“Do you think Richard knows anything about this?” she asked. “Ought we to do anything?”

“I don’t know,” answered Alice. “I have thought and thought, lying alone in the night, but never could make up my mind. There is always a danger of interfering with others who may know best. And there’s the danger of what my mother might be tempted to do the moment anyone moved in the matter. Isn’t it strange, Barbara, how much your love for your mother seems independent of her character?”

“I don’t know—yes, I think you are right. There is my mother, who is ready to burn you to ashes before you know what she is angry about! When you trust her and go to her for help, she is ready to die for you. I love her with all my heart, but I can’t say she’s an exemplary woman. I don’t think Mr. Wingfold—that’s our clergyman—would say so either, though he professes quite an admiration for her.”

At that Barbara told Alice the story of her mother’s behaviour in church, and how the parson had caught her.

“Nobody knows to this day,” she concluded, “whether he intended to so catch her, or was only teaching his people by a parable, and she caught herself in its meshes. Caught she was, anyhow, and has never entered the church since. But she speaks very differently of the clergyman now.”