Yet Amy sat silent, so that Miss Tremlow, who watched her, was troubled, and added hastily, "never mind, my dear, I am sorry I asked you. It was foolish and thoughtless of me."
"No, indeed, Miss Tremlow; it is I who am foolish; mine is but the history of an every day life. There is little to tell, but what happens, or might happen, to anyone; still less to conceal."
And Amy drew her chair closer still, and with faltering voice began the history of her earlier years. A sad tale it was though she glanced but slightly at her father's extravagance; but to speak of her mother's patience, long suffering, and forbearance through it all, she wearied not, forgetting that as she did so her father's conduct stood out in all its worst light, so that when she had finished Miss Tremlow exclaimed hastily—
"He must, nay, was a bold, bad man, not worthy of such a wife! It's a mercy he is dead, or worse might have happened."
"Do not say that, Miss Tremlow; my mother loved him so dearly."
"That is the very reason why I cannot excuse him; no woman would; but there now I have pained you again, and quite unintentionally; so please read to me, and then there will be no chance of my getting into another scrape, because I must hold my tongue, and I find that no very easy task now, I can assure you."
Amy silently took up the book she had previously laid down, but had scarcely read three pages when the door opened, and in walked Julia with a glass of jelly in her hand.
"I have been looking for you everywhere, Miss Tremlow," she said.
"Why did you not come here? Had you forgotten I was ill?"