"What right have you?" she went on. "The man who brought me to you,—poor wretched me!—if he was my father, may have been good and true. He said I was motherless; and he, or someone else, sent you money for me till I was twelve. That did not look as if I was forgotten. Now you say the money has stopped—well!—my father may be dead." Her lips quivered and a few tears rolled down her cheeks. "But there is nothing in all this that should make you think me basely born,—nothing that should have persuaded you to put shame upon me!"
He was taken aback for a minute by her words and attitude—then he burst out angrily:
"It's the old story, I see! Do a good action and it turns out a curse! Basely born! Of course you are basely born, if that's the way you put it! What man alive would leave his own lawful child at a strange farm off the high-road and never claim it again? You're a fool, I tell you! This man who brought you to me was by his look and bearing some fine gentleman or other who had just the one idea in his head—to get rid of an encumbrance. And so he got rid of you—"
"Don't go over the whole thing again!" she interrupted, with weary patience-"-I was an encumbrance to him—I've been an encumbrance to you. I'm sorry! But in no case had you the right to set a stigma on me which perhaps does not exist. That was wrong!"
She paused a moment, then went on slowly:
"I've been a burden on you for six years now,—it's six years, you say, since the money stopped. I wish I could do something in return for what I've cost you all those six years,—I've tried to be useful."
The pathos in her voice touched him to the quick.
"Innocent!" he exclaimed, and held out his arms.
She looked at him with a very pitiful smile and shook her head.
"No! I can't do that! Not just yet! You see, it's all so unexpected—things have changed altogether in a moment. I can't feel quite the same—my heart seems so sore and cold."