said, with her strange breathless rapidity of utterance. "What is
it?"

"Nothing extraordinary," I answered. "I was only wondering how
you came here."

"I came with a friend who is very good to me. I have only been
here two days."

"And you found your way to this place yesterday?"

"How do you know that?"

"I only guessed it."

She turned from me, and knelt down before the inscription once
more.

"Where should I go if not here?" she said. "The friend who was
better than a mother to me is the only friend I have to visit at
Limmeridge. Oh, it makes my heart ache to see a stain on her
tomb! It ought to be kept white as snow, for her sake. I was
tempted to begin cleaning it yesterday, and I can't help coming
back to go on with it to-day. Is there anything wrong in that? I
hope not. Surely nothing can be wrong that I do for Mrs.
Fairlie's sake?"

The old grateful sense of her benefactress's kindness was
evidently the ruling idea still in the poor creature's mind--the
narrow mind which had but too plainly opened to no other lasting