She buried him, herself the only mourner, on a bright summer’s day, with the sun shining dazzlingly on the white grave stones in Kensal Green.  The clergyman appeared, read the service, and went away again.  A few minutes ended it all.  When the undertaker and his men had also departed, she sat down on a bench near to watch the sexton filling up the grave—­Tom’s grave.  She was very quiet, and none but a closely observant person watching her face could have penetrated into the truth of what your impulsive characters, always in the extremes of mirth or misery, never understand about quiet people, that “still waters run deep.”

While she sat there some one came past her, and turned round.  It was the shabby-looking chemist’s assistant, who had a appeared at the inquest, and given the satisfactory evidence which had prevented the necessity of her giving-hers.

Elizabeth rose and acknowledged him with a respectable courtesy; for under his threadbare clothes was the bearing of a gentleman, and he had been so kind to Tom.

“I am too late,” he said; “the funeral is over.  I meant to have attended it, and seen the last of the poor fellow.”

“Thank you, Sir,” replied Elizabeth, gratefully.

The young man stood before her, looking at her earnestly for a minute or two, and then exclaimed, with a complete change of voice and manner.

“Elizabeth, don’t you know me?  What has become of my aunt Johanna?”

It was Ascott Leaf.

But no wonder Elizabeth had not recognized him.  His close cropped hair, his large beard hiding half his face, and a pair of spectacles which he had assumed, were a sufficient disguise.  Besides, the great change from his former “dandy” appearance to the extreme of shabbiness; his clothes being evidently worn as long as they could possibly hold together, and his generally depressed air, giving the effect of one who had gone down in the world, made him, even without the misleading “John Smith,” most unlikely to be identified with the Ascott Leaf of old.

“I never should have known you, Sir!” said Elizabeth truthfully, when her astonishment had a little subsided; “but I am very glad to see you.  Oh how thankful your aunts will be!”

“Do you think so?  I thought it was quite the contrary.  But it does not matter; they will never hear of me unless you tell them—­and I believe I may trust you.  You would not betray me, if only for the sake of that poor fellow yonder?”

“No, Sir.”

“Now, tell me something about my aunts, especially my aunt Johanna.”

And sitting down in the sunshine, with his arms upon the back of the bench, and his hand hiding his eyes, the poor prodigal listened in silence to every thing Elizabeth told him; of his Aunt Selina’s marriage and death, and of Mr. Lyon’s return, and of the happy home at Liverpool.

“They are all quite happy, then?” said he, at length; “they seem to have begun to prosper ever since they got rid of me.  Well, I’m glad of it.  I only wanted to hear of them from you.  I shall never trouble them any more.  You’ll keep my secret, I know.  And now I must go, for I have not a minute more to spare.  Good-by, Elizabeth.”