Her utterly forlorn condition revealed itself in all its desolateness and danger. She stopped under the shade of a magnolia-tree, and, leaning against the trunk, put back her veil, and wiped the moisture from her face. She had been walking more than two hours, and was overheated and fatigued. What should she do? The tears began to flow at the thought that the question was one for which she had no reply.
Suddenly she looked round with the vague sense that some one was watching her. She encountered the gaze of a gentleman who, with an air of mingled curiosity and compassion, stood observing her grief. He wore a loose frock of buff nankin, with white vest and pantaloons; and on his head was a hat of very fine Panama straw. Whether he was young or old Clara did not remark. She only knew that a face beautiful from its compassion beamed on her, and that it was the face of a gentleman.
“Can I assist you?” he asked.
“No, thank you,” replied Clara. “I’m fatigued,—that’s all,—and am resting here a few minutes.”
“Here’s a little house that belongs to me,” said the gentleman, pointing to a neat though small wooden tenement before which they were standing. “I do not live here, but the family who do will be pleased to receive you for my sake. You shall have a room all to yourself, and rest there till you are refreshed. Do you distrust me, my child?”
There are faces out of which Truth looks so unequivocally, that to distrust them seems like a profanation. Clara did not distrust, and yet she hesitated, and replied through her tears, “No, I do not distrust you, but I’ve no claim on your kindness.”
“Ah! but you have a claim,” said Vance (for it was he); “you are unhappy, and the unhappy are my brothers and my sisters. I’ve been unhappy myself. I knew one years ago, young like you, and like you unhappy, and through her also you have a claim. There! Let me relieve you of that bag. Now take my arm. Good! This way.” Clara’s tears gushed forth anew at these words, and yet less at the words than at the tone in which they were uttered. So musical and yet so melancholy was that tone.
He knocked at the door. It was opened by Madame Bernard, a spruce little Frenchwoman, who had married a journeyman printer, and who felt unbounded gratitude to Vance for his gift of the rent of the little house.
“Is it you, Mr. Vance? We’ve been wondering why you didn’t come.”
“Madame Bernard, this young lady is fatigued. I wish her to rest in my room.”