I am sure he has _not_ deserted you." There was no answer; no sign that she heard him; she sat there, struck to stone.

It was impossible to call the landlady in at such a moment as this.

In despair of knowing how else to rouse her, Arnold drew a chair to her side, and patted her timidly on the shoulder.

"Come!" he said, in his single-hearted, boyish way.

"Cheer up a little!" She slowly turned her head, and looked at him with a dull surprise.
"Didn't you say he had told you every thing ?" she asked.
"Yes." "Don't you despise a woman like me ?" Arnold's heart went back, at that dreadful question, to the one woman who was eternally sacred to him--to the woman from whose bosom he had drawn the breath of life.
"Does the man live," he said, "who can think of his mother--and despise women ?" That answer set the prisoned misery in her free.