With a humility and friendliness, strange enough in Ascott Leaf, he held out his hand—­empty, for he had nothing to give now—­to his aunt’s old servant.  But Elizabeth detained him.

“Don’t go, Sir, please, don’t; not just yet.”  And then she added, with an earnest respectfulness that touched the heart of the poor, shabby man, “I hope you’ll pardon the liberty I take.  I’m only a servant, but I knew you when you were a boy, Mr. Leaf:  and if you would trust me, if you would let me be of use to you in any way—­if only because you were so good to him there.”

“Poor Tom Cliffe; he was not a bad fellow; he liked me rather, I think; and I was able to doctor him and help him a little.  Heigh-ho; it’s a comfort to think I ever did any good to any body.”

Ascott sighed, drew his rusty coat sleeves across his eyes, and sat contemplating his boots, which were any thing but dandy boots now.

“Elizabeth, what relation was Tom to you?  If I had known you were acquainted with him I should have been afraid to go near him; but I felt sure, though he came from Stowbury, he did not guess who I was; he only knew me as Mr. Smith; and he never once mentioned you.  Was he your cousin, or what?”

Elizabeth considered a moment, and then told the simple fact; it could not matter now.

“I was once going to be married to him, but he saw somebody he liked better, and married her.”

“Poor girl; poor Elizabeth?”

Perhaps nothing could have shown the great change in Ascott more than the tone in which he uttered these words; a tone of entire respect and kindly pity, from which he never once departed during that conversation, and many, many others, so long as their confidential relations lasted.

“Now, Sir, would you be so kind as to tell me something about yourself?  I’ll not repeat any thing to your aunts, if you don’t wish it.”

Ascott yielded.  He had been so long, so utterly forlorn.  He sat down beside Elizabeth, and then, with eyes often averted, and with many breaks between, which she had to fill up as best as she could, he told her all his story, even to the sad secret of all, which had caused him to run away from home, and hide himself in the last place where they would have thought he was, the safe wilderness of London.  There, carefully disguised, he had lived decently while his money lasted, and then, driven step by step to the brink of destitution, he had offered himself for employment in the lowest grade of his own profession, and been taken as assistant by the not over scrupulous chemist and druggist in that not too respectable neighborhood of Westminster, with a salary of twenty pounds a year.

“And I actually live upon it!” added he, with a bitter smile.  “I can’t run into debt; for who would trust me?  And I dress in rags almost, as you see.  And I get my meals how and where I can; and I sleep under the shop counter.  A pretty life for Mr. Ascott Leaf, isn’t it now?  What would my aunts say if they knew it?”