"What is that?" asked Innocent. "Is it to be a beggar?"
Priscilla made no reply beyond her usual sniff, which expressed volumes.
"If she has found someone who really cares for her, she will never want," Innocent went on, gently. "No man could be so cruel as to take away a girl from her home for his own pleasure and then leave her alone in the world. It would be impossible! You must not think such hard things, Priscilla!"
And, smiling, she had gone her way,—while Priscilla, shaking her head again, had looked after her, dimly wondering how long she would keep her faith in men.
On this still moonlight night, when the sadness of her soul seemed heavier than she could bear, her mind suddenly reverted to this episode. She thought of the girl who had run away; and remembered that no one in the village had ever seen or heard of her again, not even her patient hard-working parents to whom she had been a pride and joy.
"Now she had a real father and mother!" she mused, wistfully—"They loved her and would have done anything for her—yet she ran away from them with a stranger! I could never have done that! But I have no father and no mother—no one but Dad!—ah!—how I have loved Dad!—and yet I don't belong to him—and when he is dead—"
Here an overpowering sense of calamity swept over her, and dropping on her knees by the open window she laid her head on her folded arms and wept bitterly.
A voice called her in subdued accents once or twice, "Innocent!
Innocent!"—but she did not hear.
Presently a rose flung through the window fell on her bent head. She started up, alarmed.
"Innocent!"