“I said,” he answered, earnestly, “that you deserved all the good fortun’ the Lord could shower upon you in this life, and I told him it would be a ‘appy day for me when I know’d that you ’ad a fortun, and was a ridin’ in your own carridge.”
Lotte saw that Bantom, in his simplicity of heart, did not detect the intention disguised in this liberal offer, but that he believed it to be a genuine sample of philanthropy on the part of some wealthy, romantic individual.
“Did you mention my address?” she inquired anxiously.
“Mr. Pupple wanted that badly, he did,” returned Mr. Bantom, smoothing his rough though new beaver hat, “but my wife said no. It ’ud be best to leave all in your ’ands, ’cos she was quite sure you’d act the right down true thing.”
“Oh! Mr. Bantom,” said Lotte, laying her hand gently upon his arm, and looking him sadly in the face, “your wife was right in her suggestion, and you, too, in following it. I know not who the person is who has thus singled me out for cruel insult; but it is right that you should know the nature of the errand upon which you have been sent to me. You have seen at night, in the street, a poor frail creature wearing a hollow smile upon her painted face, daunting in a gaudy dress, shunned by the respectable of her own sex, and frequently harshly repelled of treated as a shameless object by numbers of yours. A being whose position is at once horrifying to the virtuously disposed, and a misery and a curse to herself. But the position of this poor abandoned outcast is less degraded than that of the ‘lady’ which the gentleman of whom you have spoken would make me; because into her sin and shame the first may have been driven by dreadful destitution, while the other voluntarily purchases her pollution by empty phantoms of luxury, but remains still an object of scorn and contumely.”
The truth struck Mr. Bantom now.
His face darkened until it became almost purple, the veins in his throat and forehead swelled like cords; he ground his teeth as if he would reduce them to powder, and he clenched his hands, burying his nails in the palms.
At length a groan burst from his heaving chest. He sprang to his feet, and cried hoarsely and rapidly—“Oh, that I should ha’ been picked out to come with such a object to you. I didn’t know it, miss. Oh! I didn’t know it—by the living Lord, I didn’t. You’ll never forgive me—you can’t—you oughtn’t—I don’t deserve it! But miss, I shall see Mr. Pupplesuit agen. I’ll nip him, I will; I’ll make him tell me who sent him to me about you; and when I’ve squeezed out of him the party’s name, I’ll drag the hound here, and force him on his bended knees to beg parding on you. I will—I will.”
Mr. Bantom, as he concluded, darted out of the room, without a word of farewell, he rushed down stairs into the street, and closed the door behind him with a loud bang, ere she could overtake him.
She followed him to the street, opened the door to look after him, and found herself face to face with Mark Wilton. They recognized each other instantly, and Lotte unconsciously for the moment forgot Mr. Bantom, for Mark smiled agreeably upon her, and she could not, somehow, help smiling pleasantly upon him in return. Mark put out his hand, and she placed hers in it—a commonplace salutation enough, but it did not convey to either in the present instance that impression.