Lilith had a struggle to control her emotions; but she soon conquered them, and replied, with forced calmness:
“You are entitled to my fullest confidence, dear madame, for you have taken me almost on trust, as everybody has so kindly done since I left home——”
“Who could do otherwise, my dear? Who could look in that pretty, tender, child face and doubt you? But go on, my dear, with what you were about to say.”
“Only this, madame, that some time, when I can, I will tell you my little story. But now I can only say this much—I am from West Virginia. A reverse, a calamity, sudden and overwhelming as a thunderbolt or an earthquake, laid waste my life and destroyed all my happiness in an instant, ‘in the twinkling of an eye,’ and cast me alone upon the world. I came to New York to get away from a scene so full of miserable associations as my home had become, and seek a living here among strangers, all of whom have so charitably taken me on trust, when they might have put out the last spark of hope and life by unjust but reasonable suspicions,” said Lilith, as if she deeply felt the truth of every word she uttered.
“Who could suspect a baby?” said the lady, gently; but nevertheless she inquired within herself:
“What can have happened to this girl? Has her husband killed her father and been hanged for it? Or vice versa, or what? There are so many homicides and hangings in this vast country that no one can keep trace of them all. Her words are very enigmatical.”
Something in the lady’s looks might have betrayed the drift of her thoughts, for Lilith, with a deepening color and in a low voice, ventured to say:
“There is one circumstance that I ought to have added to my statement, madame, and it is this: There has been no dishonor connected with my misfortunes, no dishonor of any one’s. I have no way of proving this, but oh! as I hope to be saved, I am speaking the sacred truth!” she concluded, clasping her hands in the earnestness of her asseveration.
“My child, I feel sure that you do,” answered the baroness, kindly; and then she changed the subject by asking Lilith if she had ever been abroad, and if she was a good sailor.
“No,” Lilith answered. “My longest sea voyages have been from Baltimore to New York and from New York to Newport. But I am a very good sailor, for I have been in more than one storm on Chesapeake Bay and have never been sea-sick.”