Utter hopelessness is almost rest. Catharine could not understand this, and wondered within herself at the strange apathy that possessed her in this the most forlorn moment of her life.
She wandered on, careless of the direction, without object and dreamily. Once or twice she sat down on a door-step to rest, but it was only for a moment, and when she arose it was to forget that a transient repose had been obtained. At last in the drear waste of her thoughts she remembered the Irish woman who had been so kind to her at Bellevue, and around this thought centred other reflections that almost amounted to a resolution. But even this emotion died away when she reflected, that, kind as the woman was, there existed no means of ascertaining exactly where she lived.
Still Catharine wandered on; what else could she do? Even from the door-steps she might at any moment be driven forth as an intruder. It was evidently getting late; the noises of city life were gradually hushed, and the growing stillness appalled her. Never, in her whole existence, had she been so utterly alone.
Awaking from her apathy, as it were from a dull dream, she found herself upon the corner of two thoroughfares, on the east side of the town. The stores were all closed, and the streets on either hand almost deserted.
“Where can I go?—what will become of me?” she murmured, looking around with affright. “Will no one have pity on me?”
That moment a woman passed her carrying a basket of clothes on her arm.
“She is going home,” said Catharine, gazing after her through the blinding tears that filled her eyes.
“Did you speak to me, ma’am?” inquired the woman, turning back at the sound of her voice.
A faint cry broke from the poor girl, and seizing the woman joyfully by the arm, she called out.
“Oh, is it you?—is it you?”