Horton's face expressed pain and perplexity.
"It is wrong—all wrong," he said. "Where were your friends? Was there no one who cared for you, no one that you care for, enough to keep you from this wild step?"
She looked up into his face, and, for one brief moment, something in her deep, luminous eyes chained his gaze. A soft red spread itself over her cheeks and neck. She shook her head slowly, and taking up the tray, went on up the stairs.
Miss Bullins found the little note which Lilly had left for her, when, as no response came to her repeated summons to tea, she mounted the stairs to see what had happened.
She read the hastily written lines with gathering tears.
"You can get plenty of milliners and seamstresses; but those poor women and children are suffering for some one to take care of them. Forgive me for going this way, but it seemed the only way I could go. May be I shall be sick; but if I do, there is no beauty to lose, you know, and if I die, there is nobody to break their heart about it. You will be sorry, I know. I thank you, oh so much, for all your kindness to me, and I do love you dearly. May God bless you for all your goodness. If I should die, what I leave is for you to do what you please with.
"Your grateful and loving
"Lilly."
The good little woman's tears fell faster as she looked about the empty room.
"I never was so beat in my life," she confided to a dozen of her intimate friends many times over during the next week. "You could have knocked me down with a feather."