Who shall dare say to man or woman, 'There is no hope in you ?' Who shall dare say the work is all vile, when that work bears on it the stamp of the Creator's hand ?" He turned away for a moment, struggling with the emotion which she had roused in him.
Her eyes, as they followed him, lighted with a momentary enthusiasm--then sank wearily in the vain regret which comes too late.
Ah! if he could have been her friend and her adviser on the fatal day when she first turned her steps toward Mablethorpe House! She sighed bitterly as the hopeless aspiration wrung her heart.

He heard the sigh; and, turning again, looked at her with a new interest in his face.
"Miss Roseberry," he said.
She was still absorbed in the bitter memories of the past: she failed to hear him.
"Miss Roseberry," he repeated, approaching her.
She looked up at him with a start.
"May I venture to ask you something ?" he said, gently.
She shrank at the question.
"Don't suppose I am speaking out of mere curiosity," he went on.
"And pray don't answer me unless you can answer without betraying any confidence which may have been placed in you." "Confidence!" she repeated.

"What confidence do you mean ?" "It has just struck me that you might have felt more than a common interest in the questions which you put to me a moment since," he answered.

"Were you by any chance speaking of some unhappy woman--not the person who frightened you, of course--but of some other woman whom you know ?" Her head sank slowly on her bosom.

He had plainly no suspicion that she had been speaking of herself: his tone and manner both answered for it that his belief in her was as strong as ever.