“A lonely, struggling life for you, child!” Miss Wells exclaimed in an incredulous tone as she passed her hand caressingly over the pretty head resting on her shoulder. “Struggling! with the fortune your father has left you? lonely! with Espy still yours? How can it be?”
“The fortune is not mine, and Espy!—I have—have given him up!”
The first words were spoken low and hurriedly, and the last came from the white lips in a sharp cry of agony.
Utter astonishment dominated for the moment every other feeling in Miss Wells’s breast; then infinite pity and tenderness took its place, and gathering the girl to her heart, she wept over her as her own mother might, asking no questions, feeling no curiosity, every other emotion lost in the boundless compassion which would have done or suffered almost everything to restore its object to happiness.
Hannah Wells, now far on the shady side of fifty, a woman with a large, loving heart, had found few upon whom to lavish the wealth of her affection, and upon Floy she had poured it out without stint.
For many years she had maintained herself by her needle, first as seamstress, then as dressmaker; and employed by Mrs. Kemper in both capacities ever since the coming of the latter to Cranley, had often made her home in that house for weeks and months together, always treated with the kindly consideration accorded to a welcome guest or one of the family; for, spite of her poverty, Miss Wells was unmistakably a lady.
She was a woman, too, of excellent common-sense, sterling integrity, and deep piety, evinced by a life of blameless purity, a thoroughly consistent walk and conversation.
She was now enjoying a moderate degree of prosperity, having a little home of her own and something laid by for a rainy day.
She kept a number of apprentices now, who usually carried home the finished work, but loving Floy so dearly, she had herself brought home the poor child’s mourning.