another person's child, now we have a little darling of our own?"

"Does your husband agree with you in that view?" I asked.

"Oh dear, no! He said what you said just now, and (oddly enough)
almost in the same words. But I don't at all despair of
persuading him to change his mind--and you can help me."

She made that audacious assertion with such an appearance of
feeling perfectly sure of me, that my politeness gave way under
the strain laid on it. "What do you mean?" I asked sharply.

Not in the least impressed by my change of manner, she took from
the pocket of her dress a printed paper. "You will find what
I mean there," she replied--and put the paper into my hand.

It was an appeal to the charitable public, occasioned by the
enlargement of an orphan-asylum, with which I had been connected
for many years. What she meant was plain enough now. I said
nothing: I only looked at her.

Pleased to find that I was clever enough to guess what she meant,
on this occasion, the Minister's wife informed me that the
circumstances were all in our favor. She still persisted in
taking me into partnership--the circumstances were in _our_
favor.

"In two years more," she explained, "the child of that detestable
creature who was hanged--do you know, I cannot even look at
the little wretch without thinking of the gallows?--will be old