"Well?" I said.
"I did so want to see her," she continued—"though she has brought us all into such trouble. I loved her because you love her. Johanna went with me, because she is such a good judge, you know, and I did not like to rely upon my own feelings. Appearances are very much against her; but she is very engaging, and I believe she is a good girl. I am sure she is good."
"I know she is," I said.
"We talked of you," she went on—"how good you were to her that week in the spring. She had never been quite unconscious, she thought; but she had seen and heard you all the time, and knew you were doing your utmost to save her. I believe we talked more of you than of any thing else."
That was very likely, I knew, as far as my mother was concerned. But I was anxious to hear whether Olivia had not confided to her more of her secret than I had yet been able to learn from other sources. To a woman like my mother she might have intrusted all her history.
"Did you find any thing out about her friends and family?" I asked.
"Not much," she answered. "She told me her own mother had died when she was quite a child; and she had a step-mother living, who has been the ruin of her life. That was her expression. 'She has been the ruin of my life!' she said; and she cried a little, Martin, with her head upon my lap. If I could only have offered her a home here, and promised to be a mother to her!"
"God bless you, my darling mother!" I said.
"She intends to stay where she is as long as it is possible," she continued; "but she told me she wanted work to do—any kind of work by which she could earn a little money. She has a diamond ring, and a watch and chain, worth a hundred pounds; so she must have been used to affluence. Yet she spoke as if she might have to live in Sark for years. It is a very strange position for a young girl."
"Mother," I said, "you do not know how all this weighs upon me. I promised Julia to give her up, and never to see her again; but it is almost more than I can bear, especially now. I shall be as friendless and homeless as Olivia by-and-by."