“What! a lover, my little Pansy!” she cried, “and you never to tell me of him! Fie! did you think I had grown too old to feel sympathy in affairs of the heart?”
“Oh no, Aunt Nannette! but—you have troubles enough of your own, and I did not think—”
“Ah, well, tell me now; a story, and above all a love-story—especially of your love—will be the very thing to while away these weary hours. And who knows but I may have the happiness of being able to help these poor divided lovers?” she added, touching Ethel’s cheek caressingly with the fingers of her left hand, as she had a habit of doing.
“Ah, have you not helped us already?” said the young girl, smiling through gathering tears; “for I think he will come back some day and be glad to learn that there is no longer anything to keep us apart.”
“Yes, I am sure of it. And now for the story.”
“You shall have it if you wish, aunt,” said Ethel earnestly, a slight tremulousness and a sound of tears in her voice; “but to give you the whole I must also tell the story of my childhood’s days.”
“Let me hear it, child! let me have the whole!” the Madame answered almost impatiently; and Ethel at once complied.
She began with the first meeting between Espy and herself when they were mere babies; drew a lovely picture of her life in infancy and early youth; described the terrible scenes connected with the death of her adopted parents and the circumstances that followed, including her formal betrothal, the search for the missing papers, the quarrels and estrangements, her visit to Clearfield, interview with Mrs. Dobbs, arrival in Chicago, the conversation in Miss Lea’s boudoir, the sight of Espy in the church the next Sunday, her interview with him in Mr. Lea’s library; and, lastly, the manner in which she had learned the fact of his sudden departure from the city the very day that she first entered the Madame’s house, coming there in pursuit of her calling as a dressmaker’s apprentice.
It was a long story, but the Madame’s interest never flagged.
“Ah,” she said, drawing a long breath at its conclusion, and feeling for her niece’s hand that she might press it affectionately, for it was growing dark in the room, “my poor child, what you have suffered! How did you endure it all? how did you have courage to give up the property and go to work for your living?”