In the morning I took my old walk round the Square, and then sat down and tried to be patient until the bailiffs should come. Of course I did not mean to go to my darling Isola, nor even to let her know that I was so near at hand, although my heart was burning to see her sweet face again. I even kept away from the window, though I wanted to watch for the bailiffs, and strictly ordered Mrs. Shelfer not to tell her, if she should call, a word about my being there. However, it was all in vain. Mr. Shelfer went out after breakfast to his play-work in the Square, and the smell of his pipe invaded my little room. I think he must have left the front door open; at any rate I heard, all of a sudden, a quick patter of running feet, and such a crying and sobbing, and Mrs. Shelfer hurrying out to meet it.
"You can't, Miss, you can't indeed--not for a thousand pounds. The rooms are let, I tell you, and you can't go up. Oh dear, oh dear, whatever am I to do?"
"Patty, I will go up. I don't care who's there. My heart is breaking, and I will die on my darling's bed. If you stand there, I'll push you. Out of the way, I tell you." And up flew Idols, in a perfect mess of tears. What could I do but fly to meet her, and hug my only pet? What with her passion of grief, and sudden joy, at seeing me, she fainted away in my arms. I got her somehow to the sofa, and kissed her into her senses again. When she came to herself, and felt sure it was not a dream, she nestled into my bosom, as if I had been her husband, and stole long glances at me to see whether I was offended. Her pretty cloak lay on the floor, and her hat beneath the table. For a long time she sobbed and trembled so that she could not say a word, while I kept on whispering such vain words as these:
"Never mind, my pet. There, you have cried enough. Tell your own dear Clara who has dared to vex you."
To see that sweet child's misery, I felt in such a rage, I could have boxed her enemy's ears. But I never thought that it was more than a child's vexation. At last, after drinking a tumblerful of water, and giving room to her palpitating heart, she contrived to tell me her trouble.
"Why, dear, you know my pappy--pappy I used to call him--he is not my papa at all, he says himself he is not; and that is not the worst of it, for I could do well enough without him, he is always so dreadfully cross, and doesn't care for me one bit. I could do without him very well, if I had a proper papa, or if my father was dead and had loved me before he died; but now I have no father at all, and never had any in the world; I am only an outcast, an abandoned-- Oh, Clara, will you promise to forgive me, and love me all the same?"
"To be sure I will, my dearest. I am sure, you have done no harm. And even if you have been led astray--"
She looked at me with quick pride flashing through her abasement, and she took her arm off my shoulder.
"No, you have quite mistaken me. Do you think I would sit here and kiss you, if I were a wicked girl? But who am I to be indignant at anything now? He told me--are you sure the door is shut?--he told me, with a sneer, that I was a base-born child, and he used a worse word than that."
She fell away from me, her cheeks all crimson with shame, and her long eyelashes drooping heavily on them. I caught her to my heart: poor wronged one, was she a whit less pure? I seemed to love her the better, for her great misfortune. Of course, I had guessed it long ago, from what her brother told me.