Even Lord Charlewood looked with interest at the graceful, timid woman, whose fair young face was so deeply marked with lines of care.
"Will I take charge of a little child ?" she replied to the doctor's question.

"Indeed I will, and thank Heaven for sending me something to keep my heart from breaking." "You feel the loss of your own little one very keenly ?" said Lord Charlewood.
"Feel it, sir?
All the heart I have lies in my baby's grave." "You must give a little of it to mine, since Heaven has taken its own mother," he said, gently.

"I am not going to try flu bribe you with money--money does not buy the love and care of good women like you--but I ask you, for the love you bore to your own child, to be kind to mine.
Try to think, if you can, that it is your own child brought back to you." "I will," she promised, and she kept her word.
"You will spare neither expense nor trouble," he continued, "and when I return you shall be most richly recompensed.

If all goes well, and the little one prospers with you, I shall leave her with you for two or three years at least.

You have been a lady's-maid, the doctor tells me.
In what families have you lived ?" "Principally with Lady L'Estrange, of Verdun Royal, sir," she replied.
"I left because Miss L'Estrange was growing up, and my lady wished to have a French maid." In after years he thought how strange it was that he should have asked the question.
"I want you," said Lord Charlewood, "to devote yourself entirely to the little one; you will be so liberally paid as not to need work of any other kind.