"You are right," said the girl, quickly. "In my life I have been used to cruelty and unkindness. I—I—"
She stopped for a moment, and something like a flush crossed her pale cheeks; then she burst into tears.
"I will tell you my story, my good lady," she sobbed; "for the weight of it is eating my soul away."
With her throbbing little hands still held tightly in Miss Fernly's, she sobbed wretchedly:
"Surely it is the cruelest story that ever a young girl had to tell. I might have led a happy life if I had not been foolish enough to want to be a fine lady. I had often read of such things happening, and oh! I believed it. Cinderella was changed from a kitchen-maid to a fairy princess, and oh! how happy she was, if but for a brief hour.
"It seemed to me that an opportunity always came for those who watched for it. One came to me. A wealthy family took me with them to Newport for the summer, and there I met a young man fair of face, handsome as a dream. I had never before seen any one like him. You will not wonder that my heart went out to him. I had known him but a few short weeks ere he asked me to marry him, counseling a secret marriage, and I—I consented. It was not a regular minister who married us, but a—a—mayor, or somebody like that.
"My husband brought me to the city. We had barely reached here, after an all-night's journey, when I learned to my horror that he believed me to be the heiress of the wealthy people with whom I had been stopping. When I told him I was not, what a change there came over him! With a face as white as it would ever be in death, he drew back and looked at me.
"'Not an heiress?' he cried. 'Great heavens! what an eternal fool I have made of myself!'
"He left my presence quickly, telling me that it was all a mistake—that the man who had married us had not the power to do so; that it was just as well, perhaps, for he never could wed a poor girl.