"Mamma," with a tender, apologetic glance at her, "people say such things sometimes, you know, when they do not understand."
But the gentlemen could be voluble now:
"Oh, no! no, indeed! not a breath of suspicion attached to his name. His intentions were as clear as the sunlight, and the fact was, he had periled his own fortune in a dangerous time, to help others who were in straits, and he had been called to leave it at a dangerous time, and disaster has followed."
One question more:
"Will others be sufferers through this disaster?"
The answer was not so ready. The gentlemen seemed to find it necessary to look again at one another. They, however, finally admitted, to each other, that there was property enough to cover everybody's loss, if that were the wish of the family; this, without any doubt, but there would be almost nothing left.
"Very well," Claire said, "then we can bear it. We thank you, gentlemen, and you may be sure of this one thing—that no person shall lose a penny through our father's loss, if we can help it. Now, may I ask you to leave further particulars until another time? Mamma has borne as much as she can to-day."
And the gentlemen, as they went down the steps of the great brownstone front, said to each other that Benedict had left a splendid girl, with self-reliance enough to manage for herself and take care of the family.
Yet I suppose there had never been a time when Claire Benedict felt more as though all the powers which had hitherto sustained her, were about to desert, and leave her helpless, than she did when she controlled her own dismay, and helped her mother to bed, and sat beside her, and bathed her head, and steadily refused to talk, or to hear her mother talk, about this new calamity, but literally hushed her into quiet and to sleep.
Then, indeed, she took time to cry, as few girls cry; as Claire Benedict had never cried before in her life.