'Please don't, Mr. Delaford, I've had enough of all that. Please go, and take my best wishes, as long as you don't come here, for I know all about you.'
But the intruder only put his hand upon his heart, and declared that he had been misrepresented; and let a cruel world think of him as it might, there was one breast in which he could not bear that a false opinion, of him should prevail. And therewith he reached a chair, and Charlotte found herself seated and listening to him, neither believing, nor wishing to believe him, longing that he would take himself away, but bewildered by his rhetoric. In the first place, he had been hastily judged; he had perhaps yielded too much to Sir Walter—but youth, &c.; and when Lady Conway's means were in his hands, it had seemed better—he knew now that it had been a weakness, but so he had judged at the time—to supply the young gentleman's little occasions, than to make an eclat. Moreover, if he had not been the most unfortunate wretch in the world, a few lucky hits would have enabled him to restore the whole before Lord Fitzjocelyn hurried on the inquiry; but the young gentleman thought he acted for the best, and Mr. Delaford magnanimously forgave him.
Charlotte could not follow through half the labyrinth; and sat pinching the corner of her apron, with a vague idea that perhaps he was not so bad as was supposed; but what would happen if her master should find him there? She never looked up, nor made any answer, till he began to give her a piteous account of his condition; how he did not know where to turn, nor what to do; and was gradually beginning to sell off his 'little wardrobe to purchase the necessaries of life.' Then the contrast began to tell on her soft heart, and she looked up with a sound of compassion.
In the wreck of his fortunes and hopes, he had thought of her; he knew she had too generous a spirit to crush a wretch trodden down by adversity, who had loved her truly, and who had once had some few hopes of requital. Those were, alas! at an end; yet still he saw that 'woman, lovely woman, in our hours of ease'—And here he stumbled in his quotation, but the fact was, that his hopes being blasted in England, he had decided on trying his fortune in another hemisphere; but, unfortunately, he had not even sufficient means to pay for a passage of the humblest description, and if he could venture to entreat for a—in fact, a loan—it should be most faithfully and gratefully restored the moment the fickle goddess should smile on him.
Charlotte felt a gleam of joy at the prospect of getting rid of him on any terms. She belonged to a class who seldom find the golden mean in money matters, being either exceedingly close and saving, or else lavish either on themselves or other people. Good old Jane had never succeeded in saving; all her halfpence went to the beggars, and all her silver melted into halfpence, or into little presents; and on the receipt of her wages, she always rushed on to the shop like a child with a new shilling. Reading had given Charlotte a few theories on the subject, but her practice had not gone far. She always meant to put into the savings' bank; but hiring books, and daintiness, though not finery, in dress, had prevented her means from ever amounting to a sum, in her opinion, worth securing. The spirit of economy in the household had so far infected her that she had, in spite of her small wages, more in hand than ever before, and when she found what Mr. Delaford wanted, a strange mixture of feelings actuated her. She pitied the change in his fortunes; she could not but be softened by his flattering sayings,—she could not bear that he should not have another chance of retrieving his character—she knew she had trifled unjustifiably with his feelings, if he had any,—and she had a sense of being in fault. And so the little maiden ran upstairs, peeped into her red-leather work-box, pulled out her bead-purse, and extracted therefrom three bright gold sovereigns, and ran downstairs again, trembling at her own venturesomeness, afraid that their voices might be heard. She put the whole before Delaford, saying—
'There—that is all that lays in my power. Don't mention it, pray. Now, please go, and a happy journey to you.'
How she wished his acknowledgments and faithful promises were over! He did hint something about refreshment, bread-and-cheese and beer, fare which he used to despise as 'decidedly low,' but Charlotte was obdurate here, and at last he took his leave. There stood the poor, foolish, generous little thing, raking out the last embers of the kitchen fire, conscious that she had probably done the silliest action of her life, very much ashamed, and afraid of any one knowing it; and yet strangely light of heart, as if she had done something to atone for the past permission that she had granted him to play with her vanity.
'Some day she might tell Tom all about it, and she did not think he would be angry, for he knew what it was to have nowhere to go, and to want to try for one more chance.'