CHAPTER XIX.
A COUP D’ÉTAT.
“Poor little girl!” murmured Rolfe Maxwell, very softly; and he could not help pressing the little hand that lay upon his arm.
The tenderness sank into Viola’s heart, so hungry for pity and sympathy.
She sighed heavily, and walked along by his side in silence a few minutes, without thinking how strange her position was—walking at this time of night with Rolfe Maxwell, her father’s employe, and almost a stranger to herself.
In the distraught state of her mind nothing seemed strange or out of the way now.
The man’s gentleness and sympathy stole like balm into her aching heart and melted it, where coldness and blame would have steeled it into pride and anger.
“Do you really mean,” she murmured in a wistful voice such as no one had ever heard from her before, “that you really want to be my friend, that you would help me out of my trouble—for indeed I have a great trouble—if you could?”
“Yes, I mean it; for I am very sorry for you, Miss Van Lew. I will do anything in the world to help you, if you will only tell me how,” he returned, gently and encouragingly, with an earnestness that wooed her confidence.
Viola was so proud that she wanted to keep her humiliating secret from the whole world, and would not confide it even to her aunt and father; but, obeying the magnetic influence of the moment, she opened her whole passionate heart to this stranger.