“No, no one,” answered Lilith.
“Nor any one the other side?”
“No, no one is to meet me anywhere,” said the desolate girl.
“My dear child! Some one ought to meet you! It is not right or safe for a young girl traveling alone to enter a city at nightfall, with no one to meet her! But I suppose you know exactly the number and street of the people you are going to see,” said the good and sorely troubled woman.
“I am going to no house. I have no friends or even acquaintances in the city,” said Lilith.
“Then why on the face of the earth have you come here, my poor child?” inquired Mrs. Ponsonby, in surprise and distress.
Lilith, like the baby into whose state she sometimes relapsed, burst into tears, covered her face with her hands and wept bitterly.
“Now what have I done? Now what is the matter? Oh! what is the matter? Tell me, my dear. I am very sorry for you. I will help you all I can. Indeed I will, for Edith and Clara’s sake,” said Mrs. Ponsonby, bending over and caressing the girl, who, between her sobs and tears, tried to answer.
“I came,” she gasped, “because I have lost everything in the world. I have suffered cruel, cruel reverses, and could not bear to stay in the place where I had seen such happy and prosperous days so suddenly turned to misery and destitution.”
“Poor, poor, poor dear! Was it through the war, my dear?” inquired the woman, in tender, compassionate tones, while the tears stood in her kindly eyes.