The address, her intonation, betrayed her plainly enough for what she was—some little town skit, sempstress or servant-maid, broken loose, and now frightened over her own temerity.
“Why,” said he. “If you are in distress, I am a rare comforter. Come, let me remove this before it dissolves.”
She could offer no resistance to so beautiful a gentleman, and he slipped the vizard from her face. It was a blowzed and plain one so revealed, its only recommendation youth.
“Let honesty spare to deny itself,” said Hamilton. “There was no need to cover this away, child. What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know,” said the girl, distraught and sobbing. “I didn’t ought to have come. O, let me go!”
“What made you come, then?”
“’Twas my young man, there! He called me a name; and I thought—I thought, if I was to be called that——”
“You’d not be called it for nothing? Now, you know, that was foolish, because to answer wrong with wrong is like patching a worn-out gown with a piece cut from itself.”
“Yes, sir; so it is.”
“Mend bad with good, child, and”—he positively seemed to expand—“forgive injuries. Tell me, what wrought this change of feeling in you, this sense of an error realized and repented?”