"And do you love him?"
"If I did not, I should not be so miserable;" and Sophy laid her head down upon her knees and wept aloud.
"Mrs. Cotton, you distress us greatly," continued Sarah, taking her cold, passive hand. "Won't you tell a friend and neighbour the reason of this grief?"
But Sophy only wept as if her heart were breaking. The mother and daughter looked at each other.
The old woman returned again to the charge:—
"Tell one who loves thee like a mother."
A deep, long drawn sigh was the only answer.
"Speak out your mind, dear," said Sarah, pressing affectionately the thin, wasted hand that lay so passively within her own. "It will ease your heart."
"Ah! if I thought that you would tell no one,"—and Sophy raised her death-pale face, and fixed her earnest eyes mournfully upon her interrogator,—"I would confide to you my trouble; but oh, if you were so cruel as to betray me, it would drive me mad."
"Sure we can be trusted, Mistress Cotton," and the old woman drew herself up with an air of offended dignity. "What interest could Sarah and I have to betray thee? we be no idle gossips going clacking from house to house about matters that don't concern us. What good could it do us to blab the secrets of other folk?"