An hour later she sent a boy with a note to The Gaffs to Harry Travis.
He brought back an answer that made her pale with wounded love and grief. Not even Mammy Maria knew why she had crept off to bed. But in the night the old woman heard sobs from the young girl's room where she and her sister slept.
“What is it, chile?” she asked as she slipped from her own cot in the adjoining little room and went in to Helen's.
The girl had been weeping all night—she had no mother—no one to whom she could unbosom her heart—no one but the old woman who had nursed her from her infancy. This kind old creature sat on the bed and held the girl's sobbing head on her lap and stroked her cheek. She knew and understood—she asked no questions:
“It isn't that I must work in the mill,” she sobbed to the old woman—“I can do that—anything to help out—but—but—to think that Harry loves me so little as to give me up for—for—that.”
“Don't cry, chile,” said Mammy soothingly—“It ain't registered that you gwine wuck in that mill yit—I ain't made my afferdavit yit.”
“But Harry doesn't love me—Oh, he doesn't love me,” she wept. “He would not give me up for anything if he did.”
“I'm gwine give that Marse Harry a piece of my mind when I see him—see if I don't. Don't you cry, chile—hold up yo' haid an' be a Conway. Don't you ever let him know that yo' heart is bustin' for him an' fo' the year is out we'll have that same Marse Harry acrawlin' on his very marrow bones to aix our forgiveness. See if we won't.”
It was poor consolation to the romantic spirit of Helen Conway. Daylight found her still heart-broken and sobbing in the old woman's lap.