“Oh, I am so sorry to be so late,” she said. “Have you been waiting very long? Oh, this room is cold! Why haven’t they kept the fire up?” She turned, with a pretty, hospitable impulse to summon a servant, but Dr. Morse stopped her with a gesture.
“I am quite warm. I will only detain you for a few moments. I want you to help me.”
“Indeed, I will; has anything gone wrong?”
“Yes,” he said, with a hard look.
“One of your poor people?” she asked. She sat down by the fire, one silken foot on the fender; her cloak had slipped down behind her, and she was pulling out her gloves, and smoothing them on her knee. She looked up at him with a charming smile.
“Yes,” he said, “one of my poor people—and yours. Miss Wharton, can you tell me anything about Nellie Sherman?”
“Nellie?” Sara Wharton’s face began to change. “Oh, Dr. Morse, I wish I could tell you anything encouraging about her. She quarreled with her aunt, and went to work at a factory in North Mercer. She hardly ever comes home, I’m sorry to say; she is boarding with a respectable family, I believe, and I think she does not depend on Mrs. Sherman for any money. But I’ve lost my hold on her—if I ever had any! She has only been to see me once since she came home in September. You know I sent her away in the summer? And she got well, Dr. Morse!” she ended triumphantly.
“Yes; she did,” he said with stern significance.
“What is the matter? Is she sick again? is she—dead?”
“Dead? I wish she were.”