"I promise you solemnly," answered Rose. the girl. "If I told others what I have told you, and led to their being taken, he would be sure to die. He is the boldest, and has been so cruel!" "Is it possible," cried Rose," that for such a man as this, you can resign every future hope, and the certainty of immediate rescue? It is madness." "I don't know what it is," answered the girl; "I only know that it is so, and not with me alone, but with hundreds of others as bad and wretched as myself. I must go back. Whether it is God's wrath for the wrong I have done, I do not know; but I am drawn back to him through every suffering and ill usage: and should be, I believe, if I knew that I was to die by his hand | What fascination is it that can take at last." "What am I to do?" said Rose. "I should not let you depart from me thus." "You should, lady, and I know you will," rejoined the girl, rising. "You will not stop my going because I have trusted in your goodness, and forced no promise from you, as I might have done." "Of what use, then, is the communication you have made?" said Rose. "This mystery must be investigated, or how will its disclosure to me, benefit Oliver, whom you are anxious to serve?" "You must have some kind gentleman about you that will hear it as a secret, and advise you what to do," rejoined the girl. "But where can I find you again when it is necessary?" asked Rose. "I do not seek to know where these dreadful people live, but where will you be walking or passing at any settled period from this time?" "Will you promise me that you will have my secret strictly kept, and come alone, or with the only other person that knows it; and that I shall not be watched or followed?" asked the girl. "Every Sunday night, from eleven until the clock strikes twelve," said the girl without hesitation, “I will walk on London Bridge if I am alive." Stay another moment," interposed Rose, as the girl moved hurriedly towards the door. "Think once again on your own condition, and the opportunity you have of escaping from it. You have a claim on me: not only as the voluntary bearer of this intelligence, but as a woman lost almost beyond redemption. Will you return to this gang of robbers, and to this man, when a word can save you? you back, and make you cling to wickedness and misery? Oh! is there no chord in your heart that I can touch! Is there nothing left, to which I can appeal against this terrible infatuation!" "When ladies as young, and good, and beautiful as you are," replied the girl steadily, " give away your hearts, love will carry you all lengths-even such as you, who have home, friends, other admirers, everything to fill them. When such as I, who have no certain roof but the coffin-lid, and no friend in sickness or death but the hospital nurse, set our rotten hearts on any man, and let him fill the place that has been a blank through all our wretched lives, who can hope to cure us? Pity us, lady-pity us for having only one feeling of the woman left, and for having that turned, by a heavy judgment, from a comfort and a pride, into a new means of violence and suffering." "You will," said Rose, after a pause, "take some money from me, which may enable you to live without dishonesty-at all events until we meet again?" "Not a penny," replied the girl, waving her hand. "Do not close your heart against | lady, and send as much happiness on all my efforts to help you," said Rose, your head as I have brought shame on stepping gently forward. "I wish to mine!" serve you indeed." "You would serve me best, lady," replied the girl, wringing her hands, "if you could take my life at once; for I have felt more grief to think of what I am, to-night, than I ever did before, and it would be something not to die in the same hell in which I have lived. God bless you, sweet Thus speaking, and sobbing aloud, the unhappy creature turned away; while Rose Maylie, overpowered by this extraordinary interview, which had more the semblance of a rapid dream than an actual occurrence, sank into a chair, and endeavoured to collect her wandering thoughts. CHAPTER XLI. CONTAINING FRESH DISCOVERIES, AND SHOWING THAT SURPRISES, LIKE MISFORTUNES, SELDOM COME ALONE. HER situation was, indeed, one of no would infallibly be to hold a confer common trial and difficulty. While ence with the worthy doctor on the she felt the most eager and burning subject. As to resorting to any legal desire to penetrate the mystery in adviser, even if she had known how which Oliver's history was enveloped, to do so, it was scarcely to be thought she could not but hold sacred the con- of, for the same reasons. Once the fidence which the miserable woman thought occurred to her of seeking with whom she had just conversed, assistance from Harry; but this had reposed in her, as a young and awakened the recollection of their last guileless girl. Her words and manner parting, and it seemed unworthy of had touched Rose Maylie's heart; and, her to call him back, when the tears mingled with her love for her young rose to her eyes as she pursued this charge, and scarcely less intense in its train of reflection-he might have by truth and fervour, was her fond wish this time learnt to forget her, and to to win the outcast back to repentance be happier away. and hope. They only proposed remaining in London three days, prior to departing for some weeks to a distant part of the coast. It was now midnight of the first day. What course of action could she determine upon, which could be adopted in eight-and-forty hours? Or how could she postpone the journey without exciting suspicion? Mr. Losberne was with them, and would be for the next two days; but Rose was too well acquainted with the excellent gentleman's impetuosity, and foresaw too clearly the wrath with which, in the first explosion of his indignation, he would regard the instrument of Oliver's re-capture, to trust him with the secret, when her representations in the girl's behalf could be seconded by no experienced person. These were all reasons for the greatest caution and most circumspect behaviour in communicating it to Mrs. Maylie, whose first impulse Disturbed by these different reflections; inclining, now to one course and then to another, and again recoiling from all, as each successive consideration presented itself to her mind; Rose passed a sleepless and anxious night. After more communing with herself next day, she arrived at the desperate conclusion of consulting Harry. "If it be painful to him," she thought, "to come back here, how painful will it be to me! But perhaps he will not come; he may write, or he may come himself, and studiously abstain from meeting me--he did when he went away. I hardly thought he would; but it was better for us both." And here Rose dropped the pen, and turned away, as though the very paper which was to be her messenger should not see her weep. She had taken up the same pen, and laid it down again fifty times, and had considered and reconsidered the first line of her letter without writing the first word, when Oliver, who had been walking in the streets, with Mr. Giles for a body-guard, entered the room in such breathless haste and violent agitation, as seemed to betoken some new cause of alarm. "What makes you look so flurried?" asked Rose, advancing to meet him. "I hardly know how; I feel as if I should be choked," replied the boy. "Oh dear! to think that I should see him at last, and you should be able to know that I have told you all the truth!" "I never thought you had told us anything but the truth," said Rose, soothing him. "But what is this? of whom do you speak?" "I have seen the gentleman," replied Oliver, scarcely able to articulate," the gentleman who was so good to me Mr. Brownlow, that we have so often talked about." "Where?" asked Rose. Getting out of a coach," replied. Oliver, shedding tears of delight, "and going into a house. I didn't speak to him—I couldn't speak to him, for he didn't see me, and I trembled so, that I was not able to go up to him. But Giles asked, for me, whether he lived there, and they said he did. Look here," said Oliver, opening a scrap of paper, "here it is; here's where he lives-I'm going there directly! Oh, dear me, dear me! what shall I do when I come to see him and hear him speak again!" With her attention not a little distracted by these, and a great many other incoherent exclamations of joy, Rose read the address, which was Craven-street, in the Strand, and very soon determined upon turning the discovery to account. "Quick!" she said, " tell them to fetch a hackney-coach, and be ready to go with me. I will take you there directly, without a minute's loss of time. I will only tell my aunt that we are going out for an hour, and be ready as soon as you are." Oliver needed no prompting to despatch, and in little more than five minutes they were on their way to Craven-street. When they arrived there, Rose left Oliver in the coach, under pretence of preparing the old gentleman to receive him; and sending up her card by the servant, requested to see Mr. Brownlow on very pressing business. The servant soon returned, to beg that she would walk up stairs; and following him into an upper room, Miss Maylie was presented to an elderly gentleman of benevolent appearance, in a bottlegreen coat. At no great distance from whom, was seated another old gentleman, in nankeen breeches and gaiters; who did not look particularly benevolent, and who was sitting with his hands clasped on the top of a thick stick, and his chin propped thereupon. "Dear me," said the gentleman, in the bottle-green coat, hastily rising with great politeness, "I beg your pardon, young lady-I imagined it was some importunate person who-I beg you will excuse me. Be seated, pray." "Mr. Brownlow, I believe, sir?" said Rose, glancing from the other gentleman to the one who had spoken. "That is my name," said the old gentleman. "This is my friend, Mr. Grimwig. Grimwig, will you leave us for a few minutes?" "I believe," interposed Miss Maylie, "that at this period of our interview, I need not give that gentleman the trouble of going away. If I am correctly informed, he is cognizant of the business on which I wish to speak to you." Mr. Brownlow inclined his head. Mr. Grimwig, who had made one very stiff bow, and risen from his chair, made another very stiff bow, and dropped into it again. "I shall surprise you very much, I I have no doubt," said Rose, naturally embarrassed; "but you once showed great benevolence and goodness to a very dear young friend of mine, and I am sure you will take an interest in hearing of him again." "Indeed!" said Mr. Brownlow. "Oliver Twist you knew him as," replied Rose. The words no sooner escaped her lips, than Mr. Grimwig, who had been affecting to dip into a large book that lay on the table, upset it with a great crash, and falling back in his chair, discharged from his features every expression but one of the most unmitigated wonder, and indulged in a prolonged and vacant stare; then, as if ashamed of having betrayed so much emotion, he jerked himself, as it were, by a convulsion into his former attitude, and looking out straight before him emitted a long, deep whistle, which seemed, at last, not to be discharged on empty air, but to die away in the innermost recesses of his stomach. Mr. Brownlow was no less surprised, although his astonishment was not expressed in the same eccentric manner. He drew his chair nearer to Miss Maylie's, and said, "Do me the favour, my dear young lady, to leave entirely out of the question that goodness and benevolence of which you speak, and of which nobody else knows anything; and if you have it in your power to produce any evidence which will alter the unfavourable opinion I was once induced to entertain of that poor child, in Heaven's name put me in possession of it." "A bad one! I'll eat my head if he is not a bad one," growled Mr. Grimwig, speaking by some ventriloquial power, without moving a muscle of his face. wig. 66 'No, he does not," said Mr. Brownlow, obviously rising in wrath as he spoke. "He'll eat his head, if he doesn't," growled Mr. Grimwig. "He would deserve to have it knocked off, if he does," said Mr. .Brownlow. "And he'd uncommonly like to see any man offer to do it," responded Mr. Grimwig, knocking his stick upon the floor. Having gone thus far, the two old gentlemen severally took snuff, and afterwards shook hands, according to their invariable custom. "Now, Miss Maylie," said Mr. Brownlow, "to return to the subject in which your humanity is so much interested. Will you let me know what intelligence you have of this poor child: allowing me to preinise that I exhausted every means in my power of discovering him, and that since I have been absent from this country, my first impression that he had imposed upon me, and had been persuaded by his former associates to rob me, has been considerably shaken." Rose, who had had time to collect her thoughts, at once related, in a |