“Entire stranger!” with a sigh. “Ah, who would be a stranger? In vain, I wander; no one will have confidence in me.”
“You interest me,” said the good lady, in mild surprise. “Can I any way befriend you?”
“No one can befriend me, who has not confidence.”
“But I—I have—at least to that degree—I mean that——”
“Nay, nay, you have none—none at all. Pardon, I see it. No confidence. Fool, fond fool that I am to seek it!”
“You are unjust, sir,” rejoins the good lady with heightened interest; “but it may be that something untoward in your experiences has unduly biased you. Not that I would cast reflections. Believe me, I—yes, yes—I may say—that—that——”
“That you have confidence? Prove it. Let me have twenty dollars.”
“Twenty dollars!”
“There, I told you, madam, you had no confidence.”
The lady was, in an extraordinary way, touched. She sat in a sort of restless torment, knowing not which way to turn. She began twenty different sentences, and left off at the first syllable of each. At last, in desperation, she hurried out, “Tell me, sir, for what you want the twenty dollars?”