“Of course! Say, Ellen, if you knew what that girl has gone through, without a murmur; and now I’m afraid— By George! we ought to spare her.”
“We?”
“Yes; you and I. You can do a lot to help, Ellen, if you will. That old man you saw is sick, hardly sane. And no wonder.”
He stopped short and stared fixedly at his companion.
“Did you guess who he was?” he asked abruptly.
Ellen reflected. “I can guess—if you’ll give me time.”
Jim made an impatient gesture. “That’s just what I thought,” he growled. “There’ll be the devil to pay generally.”
“Jim,” said Ellen earnestly, “if we are to help her, you must tell me all about that old man.”
“She wanted to tell everybody,” he recollected gloomily. “And why not you? Imagine an innocent child set apart from the world by another’s crime, Ellen. See, if you can, that child growing up, with but one thought, one ideal—the welfare of that other person. Picture to yourself what it would be like to live solely to make a great wrong right, and to save the wrongdoer. Literally, Ellen, she has borne that man’s grief and carried his sorrow, as truly as any vaunted Saviour of the world. Can you see it?”
“Do you mean—? Is that why she calls it Bolton House? Of course! And that dreadful old man is— But, Jim, everybody will find it out.”