"What, after all," thought I, "if there should be more order and system in the working of the moral world than I have thought?
Does there not seem in the present instance to be something like the working of a Divine hand?
I could not conceive why this woman, better educated than her mother, should have been, as she certainly was, a worse character than her mother.

Yet perhaps this woman may be better and happier than her mother ever was; perhaps she is so already--perhaps this world is not a wild, lying dream, as I have occasionally supposed it to be." But the thought of my own situation did not permit me to abandon myself much longer to these musings.

I started up.

"Where are you going, child ?" said the woman anxiously.

"I scarcely know," said I; "anywhere." "Then stay here, child," said she; "I have much to say to you." "No," said I, "I shall be better moving about;" and I was moving away, when it suddenly occurred to me that I might never see this woman again; and turning round offered her my hand, and bade her good-bye.