“I am sorry for you in your trouble,” she said, in a low voice, “and I would gladly help you if I could. But I cannot forget my mother’s broken heart—the slow torture of long years. I had to look on and see her suffer, not even knowing the cause of her sorrow, utterly unable to comfort her. Sorrow had hardened her. She was hard to me, a hard task-mistress rather than a mother. And now you tell me she has gone away, no one knows where. What can I do to help you and her?”
“God knows if you can do anything, Mercy,” he answered, looking up at her gently, relieved somewhat by those unaccustomed tears.
He took her hand, which she did not withhold from him.
“Sit down, Mercy,” he said, “sit here by my side, and let us consider calmly what we can do. Your mother has no friends to whom she could go, no one, unless it were Miss Newton.”
“Miss Newton,” cried Mercy. “What does my mother know of Miss Newton?”
“They were acquainted many years ago, but your mother would hardly go to her now.”
“My mother knew Miss Newton, my one friend?”
“Yes, long ago. How did you come to know her?”
“She sought me out. It is the business of her life to seek out those who have most need of her, to whom her friendship can do most good. She heard of me from a girl who lives in this house, and she came to me and invited me to her lodgings, and brightened my life by her kindness. And did she really know my mother, years ago?”
“Yes, more than thirty years ago, when they were both young.”