Then followed passionate pleadings and supplications to the humble work-girl to quit her present place of abode, and move to another more obscure and secluded, where they were not likely to be tracked nor disturbed—where not even Lotte’s own brother should, for a time, know how to find them.
Lotte, as she listened to Helen’s urgent appeals, gazed round her neat little room—at her bird, her flowers—all that made it so cheerful, and ministered so much to her happiness. She thought of the brief but delicious visits of her brother; and there were latent impressions, too—most agreeable even to contemplate—of probable morning calls to be made by Mr. Mark Wilton. These anticipated and other actual pleasures she must sacrifice, if she complied with the wish of Helen. Nay, more, she felt that a sudden departure and secret mode of living must fling her own fair character under the shadow of suspicion.
She was progressing now in the world’s favour—she was more prosperous than she had ever been—she was lifted out of a state of the hardest and poorest paid toil; the world seemed to begin to smile in earnest upon her. To go back into a species of obscurity with Helen was to deaden, if not destroy, all those brighter hopes which, without making them known to mortal, she had shaped and fashioned and pressed to her heart—it was, in fact, to renew under yet harder terms her desperate battle with life.
All these considerations struck her with their full force. The sacrifice required was of herself, not for herself.
She gazed thoughtfully—pained thought it was—upon Helen’s beautiful but woe-stricken face. She perceived the lines of acute misery which already had begun to display themselves, and it flashed across her brain at the instant that if she said nay to Helen’s prayer, Helen would go alone into secrecy among strangers, friendless and heart-broken.
Lotte supported the trembling, earnest, agonized suppliant in her arms.
“If I had not found a friend in my extremity,” she whispered to her, “I had perished. We will go away from here together, and let the world say what it may of me, I am innocent of ill-doing. I can justify myself in the eyes of the Almighty, and I need care little for what others may unkindly believe; I may be humble, but you shall find me, Miss Grahame, a true friend. I will sustain you to the last in your terrible affliction to the best of my power: so compose and calm yourself as well as you can, and leave the rest to me.”
“Oh, Lotte, Lotte!” sobbed Helen, kissing her cheek, passionately. “My more than friend, how can I be ever sufficiently grateful to you?”
“Not a word—not a word!” cried Lotte, putting her hand gently before her mouth, and conducting her tenderly to a seat.
By eight o’clock the next evening, Lotte and her companion had removed from their late abode, without leaving behind them a clue to their new address.