'But he need not know,' she replied; 'I shall not tell him. Let it be a confidence between us. I saw some papers which you brought last night, but I do not understand them any more than papa does.'
I could not resist her pleading, and I told her, awkwardly and hesitatingly, what I had told her father.
'And all this trouble is about money,' she said with smiles; 'I was afraid it was something worse.'
I told her that it could not well be worse, unless she knew where money was to be obtained. She answered that she did not know, but that she supposed it would be got somewhere.
'You don't understand these matters of business,' I said; 'it is perhaps better for you.'
'That can't be,' she exclaimed; 'if I knew anything of business I should know where to get the money from, and I would get it That is what business men are for, is it not?'
Charmed as I was by her simplicity--a simplicity which was utterly new to me, and which it was delightful to hear from her lips--I deemed it my duty to explain matters clearly to her. Steeling my heart, I did so in plain terms, and showed her the position in which her father would be placed within a very few days.
'You frighten me!' she cried, as my words forced conviction upon her; and overcome by the news or by my manner of telling it, she fainted. If she had been fair before, how much fairer was she now as she lay before me? Her childlike ways, her beauty, her helplessness, made a slave of me. I feared at first that I had killed her, and I reproached myself bitterly. Timidly I bathed her forehead with water, and when she opened her eyes, and looked at me in innocent wonder, a feeling that might have been heaven-born--to use a phrase--so fraught was it with thankful happiness, took possession of me. I explained to her what had occurred, and she lowered her veil to hide her tears. As I witnessed her grief, it seemed to me as if I were the cause of her father's misfortunes.
'And there is absolutely no hope for us?' she sobbed.
'There is only the hope,' I replied, 'as I explained to your father, that some friend will come forward and serve him in this strait.'