In a moment Carlotta was down on the floor beside her, lifting the poor bowed head to her bosom, smoothing the brown hair from the fair brow that was once so pure, and dropping the tears of her Christ-like pity on the upturned face. The poor girl had no strength to stir, but only put up her white hands feebly and murmured:
”Do not touch me; oh! do not touch me. God knows I am unworthy to breathe the air you do. Leave me! Cast me off as all the world have done,” and again she would make those gentle, piteous moans.
As soon as Carlotta could command her voice she bent down, and kissing her forehead tenderly, said:
”Lulie, darling, we have come to save you.”
”To save me? Oh, no; it’s too late—too late!”
”Do not say so, dearest Lulie,” urged Carlotta; ”our carriage is at the door. Do not wait a moment, but come with us and leave forever this pit of perdition.”
”Would to God I could,” she said, shaking her head slowly, and speaking in the same low tone; ”there was a time I might have gone, but not now, not now.”
”But, Lulie, we are going away from this country to Cuba, where no one has ever known you. No one is with us except mother, who is even now waiting to receive you. We will forever bury the past, and look forward only to a new life. Lulie, come with us, and be my darling sister in our happy home.”
She raised herself from Carlotta, and, placing her hands over her face, sat rocking herself back and forth, her very frame convulsed with the agony of her struggle. When she lifted her face again her mind was made up.
”It cannot be, Lottie,” she said, calling Carlotta’s name for the first time. ”Heaven only knows how I appreciate your goodness and thank you for it; but I cannot go with you; I cannot throw the shadow of my presence on your household. The world has no forgiveness for my sin, and no life of penitence or purity I might lead would ever wash away the stain. I do not doubt your kindness; as God is my witness I believe that you would love me, but, do what you would to forget and conceal it, in your hearts I could never be anything but poor fallen Lulie—and the consciousness that you all knew of my ruin would make your very presence a torture to me.”