“Great Heaven! what is the matter, Miss Hattie?” he cried, as he saw her face turn whiter and whiter, and her tall, graceful form totter and reel as if stricken by a fearful blow.
“My mother is dying,” she gasped, “and I far away, with forgiveness not passed between us,” and she sank shivering into the chair from which she had arisen.
And now, in a flash of thought, Mr. W—— remembered where he had seen those initials before. They were on the clasp of the portfolio which held her drawings. Undoubtedly they were the initials of her real name, and all this time she had been to him only Hattie Butler.
“Miss Hattie, how can I assist you? If you desire it, I will escort you anywhere you wish to go, leaving when you desire, waiting for you, and keeping sacredly any secret you may share with me.”
“Oh, Mr. W——, you are so good. Do not believe me wicked, or reveal it, if I tell you that my real name is embraced in those initials—that no wrong doing of my own caused me to hide it under another, but that I sought to escape persistent annoyance on a subject I may not name now—sought to evade a demand which wealthy and worldly parents made of me.”
“Miss Hattie, I would stake my life on your goodness, that every action of your life has been pure, and marked by the noblest of purposes. Now, tell me what I must or can do for you.”
“Grant me leave to absent myself a little while. It may be two or three days—it can hardly be less—it may be longer, and while I am gone, please go to Mr. Legare’s and explain to him and his family that I was called away at almost a moment’s notice. I must take the four o’clock boat for Boston. I will have time to go to my boarding-house, settle my bill, and then I can take a carriage for the boat.”
“May I not escort you there?”
“For both our sakes, it will be better not. I will be safe in a carriage and in the open light of day. Do not fear. And, Mr. W——, I will, when I come back, if you are not gone to California, tell you all. I will withhold nothing from so good, so true a friend. I go to the bedside of a dying mother. That is what that notice calls me to. I will not condemn that mother at this hour. But it was her pride and obstinacy that forced me into a strange city to earn my daily bread.”
“Do you not need more money?” asked Mr. W——.