“It would not have mattered much; life is so sad.”
“Sad? For one so young, and—pardon me—so lovely?” exclaimed her new friend, in surprise.
Floy answered, out of the bitterness of her sad heart:
“I am only a poor orphan, sir, with no relatives and but few friends. To such a one life offers little happiness.”
“That is true,” assented the nobleman, with keen sympathy; and a great wave of tenderness swept over him for the lovely, hapless child of misfortune.
He looked at her simple dress, and guessed that she was poor as well as orphaned.
He, too, was almost alone in life; but he was rich, so he had many friends. We can always count our friends when we are rich.
She seemed little more than a child to this man of forty years, and he felt as if he would like to draw the golden head against his shoulder and tell her she should be his child, his dear adopted little daughter, if she would, and that poverty and sorrow, those grim twins, should never come near her any more.
But he feared to startle her by an abrupt avowal of his benevolent desire, lest he should arouse distrust in her girlish mind, she looked so timid and innocent as she sat there by his side, so he decided not to speak to her abruptly of his wish.