"That is precisely what I wish to find out," she responded. "She has changed her address, and I thought it possible you might know something of her whereabouts."
"I have not seen her since the morning when she came into your studio.
Doesn't Herman know?"
"The truth is," Helen said slowly, weighing her words with regard to their effect upon Edith, "that she has run away, and we do not know what has become of her. She went off in a rage, and I am troubled about her."
"Is she the Italian you spoke of, Arthur?" interrupted Mrs. Fenton in her soft voice. "What is she like?"
"Yes; a black-haired, splendidly shaped girl with piercing black eyes."
"I think I know where she is," Edith said quietly.
"You?" the others asked in one breath.
"You see," Mrs. Fenton explained, turning towards Helen, "I have made rather a plunge into charity work. Of course I meant to do something, but I hardly expected to begin quite so soon. But Mr. Candish is my rector, and he came for me yesterday to go to an Italian family that cannot speak English well. The children have just been put into our schools, but they have not advanced very far as yet. Their teacher asked Mr. Candish to do something for them; they are wretchedly poor. I wish you could see the place, Mrs. Greyson. Eight people in a room not so large as this, and such poverty as you could hardly imagine. Yet these people had taken in another. The mother goes about selling fruit, and she happened to speak to this girl that I think is Ninitta in her own language one night. The girl had been wandering about in the cold, not knowing where to go, and I suppose the sound of her own tongue touched her heart. Poor thing; she would not speak a word to me. How strange that I should chance to find her."
"Thank heaven she is safe," was Helen's inward exclamation. Aloud she said: "But what is she doing?"
"Nothing," Edith answered. "She seems to have had a little money, so that she can pay the family something, and she has helped to take care of the children. They are Catholics, naturally, and not in Mr. Candish's parish; but they do not seem to have much religion of any kind, and keep clear of the priest for some reason."