The talk ran something like this:
“Mrs. Ponsonby, a very dear friend of Mrs. Downie, brought her from the South, to try to get something to do in New York.”
“They say her father was a rich planter, who was totally ruined in the late war.”
“Not at all. He was a wealthy banker of Richmond, who failed in ’65.”
“A great mistake. She was the only child of a Baltimore broker, who——”
“Oh, no! A Washington merchant, who became a bankrupt last year, and——”
And so forth, and so forth.
At last, however, the chaotic story came into form and shape and permanent existence, as follows:
Miss Wilding—for that was the way in which Mrs. Downie had heard and repeated the word when Lilith, remembering that her husband had forbidden her to use his name, had replied to the landlady’s inquiries by giving the one to which she had the next best right, and saying, “My name is Wyvil,” whereupon the landlady thought she said, “Wilding,” and thought, from her child-like appearance, that she was, of course, a single woman, and reported her as Miss Wilding—Miss Wilding, then, according to the crystalized gossip of the house, was the only child of a wealthy Virginia planter, who had been ruined by the war, and had died, leaving his motherless daughter entirely destitute. Mrs. Ponsonby had become so much interested in the young orphan that she had brought her to New York to get something to do, and had very wisely brought her straight to Mrs. Downie’s boarding-house, and had very properly become surety for her board, for Mrs. Downie, with all her goodness of heart, was too poor to lose the board money, which Mrs. Ponsonby was quite rich enough to pay without feeling it.
Lilith was also spared troublesome questions, because the inmates of the house, though poor enough in this world’s goods, were too refined openly to intrude upon the reserve of the young stranger; and also because, when once the good landlady, in the motherly kindness of her heart, had questioned Lilith concerning her troubles, the poor girl had burst into such a passion of tears that Mrs. Downie became very much distressed, and after doing all she could to soothe the mourner’s sorrow, she not only resolved never again to allude to the subject, but she warned all her young inmates to observe the same caution.