“Your love has been fixed upon a very unstable heart; but you have rights which must yet insure you his support. There is some one who will protect these rights and protect you in your efforts to substantiate them.”
“His aunt,” she put in, shaking her head. “She can do nothing, unless—” Her excitement became abnormal. “Have they found the money?” she shrieked; “have they—have they found the money?”
I could not deceive her; she had seen it in my eye.
“And they will—”
“Hardly,” I whispered. “He has displeased them; they can not be generous to him now.”
Her hopes sank as if the very basis of her life had been taken away.
“It was my only hope,” she murmured. “With that money in my hand—some, any of it, I could have dared his frown and won in a little while his good will, but now—I can only anticipate rebuff. There is nothing for me to hope for now. I must continue to be Bess, the thread and needle woman.”
“I did not say that the one to reinstate you was Miss Quinlan.”
“Who then? who then?”
“Mayor Packard.”