It can now be understood why she did not return to Lotte to claim her child.
In the meanwhile, explanations, secret and confidential, had taken place between Lotte and her brother. The former, though she religiously preserved Helen Grahame’s secret, quite gave her brother to understand that she was able to meet him without a blush upon her cheek, raised there by any sense of a blot upon her fair fame; and he was content to believe this, without pressing upon her any prying questions which would have embarrassed her to answer. She learned from him, however, that he had seen Evangeline Grahame several times. He was, therefore, able to inform her of Helen’s sudden appearance at her father’s house, of her subsequent disappearance with some strange man, who, having felled Lester Vane to the ground, when he endeavoured to intercept their flight, had borne her away. In spite of all attempts to discover them, they had not been heard of since.
Lotte, despite the aspect that Helen’s conduct wore, had faith in her still. She had many opportunities of judging her nature during the time that they had lived together; and though she could not help observing many defects in her composition, she was able to detect that they were more the result of a fostered pride and false education than any real failing or flaw in a true nobility of spirit. Of course, she was unable to fathom the cause for her absence and her silence, but she was convinced that she should see her again, and that, too, at the earliest moment the mother could command the opportunity to rejoin her child.
So she continued carefully to tend it, to cherish and fondle it, as though it were her own.
What rosy cheeks she had! what a soft, beaming expression lighted up her humid eyes! and what a pretty smile curled her small lips, as she thought, when pressing this little creature to her bosom, during the first period of its charge, that some day she might have as pretty a treasure to hold up to the fond kiss of the man she loved! But since her last interview with Mark Wilton, that thought, if it presented itself, was hastily dismissed with a tearful sigh.
She never expected to see him more, and she consigned to the tomb of other once-cherished hopes the visionary imaginings she had for a time so fondly conjured up, in spite of the jeers of her common sense, respecting him.
Yet he came again to see her, as before, unbidden; and, as before, unexpectedly.
Hal Vivian had seen him, and had listened quietly to a violent and incoherent string of complaints, observations, reproaches and charges against Lotte Clinton, from his lips; and when he had exhausted his subject, he reasoned with him quietly. He elicited from him that he had never made even an advance to Lotte beyond the limits of courtesy, and that she had, therefore, no right to divine or to perceive that he had formed a strong attachment for her; and that he had neither claim to interfere in her affairs, nor right to utter one harsh epithet respecting her. Hal thereupon told him firmly, that holding her in his high esteem—for he believed her character to be as noble as her nature was pure—he would not suffer any one, not even his nearest relative or dearest friend, to repeat, in his hearing, one word defamatory to her good name.
Mark, despite his own suspicions, his uneasy and unhappy forebodings and speculations, heard Vivian speak thus confidently with inward satisfaction; and having incoherently assented to all he advanced, with some lingering misgivings, he thought it perhaps would be as well if he never saw her more, and under that impression he went—direct to her abode, and again presented himself before her.
He found her at work—ever at work—but as his eye ran rapidly round the apartment, he detected the absence of the child. He cared not where it was, so that it was not where he held an interview with her.