An accordant glance passed between Adelaide and Simon. When Withers retired, Simon followed him, and under Adelaide's window, and under her eyes, he boxed the ears of Philip, the Debonair. After that, Mr. Withers was discreeter.
But Miss Wimple's trial was not yet at its worst. The low-necked dress had been as unseasonable as the substitution of the hooped skirt for the quilted petticoat was imprudent. Before Madeline had been gone a week, she contracted, as was to be feared, a heavy cold, which within a month assumed a chronic bronchial form, attended with alarming symptoms. The extreme dejection of spirits, consequent upon her persecuted loneliness, had predisposed her to disease in the first place, and aggravated its character when it came.
At last she fell dangerously ill, and with the closing of the shop—for she could hire no one to attend in it—came poverty in its most dreadful form. But for the charity of her kind physician, who sent a servant-girl, a mere child, to nurse her, and daily kept her supplied with proper nourishment from his own house, she would, so it seemed to her, have died of neglect and starvation. Yet better, she thought, to depart even so, than linger on, when such lingering taxed the patience and the faith beyond the loftiest examples of religion. Miss Wimple was too stout-hearted to cry for death, though she felt, that, having lived with heroism, she could at least die with presence of mind. She waited, with a composure that had a strange quality of pride.
In her New York home, Mrs. Morris, the governess, was as happy as she dared to feel. In Mr. Osgood's family she had found all things as Miss Wimple had promised. Treated with studious deference and consideration, not unmixed with affection, she enjoyed for her secret thoughts the most privileged privacy. Her brave gratitude was superior to the distress a weaker woman might have suffered from the necessity of making Mr. Osgood unreservedly acquainted with her story, in order to enlist his aid to procure tidings of Miss Wimple, whose safety, health, and happiness were now far dearer to her than her own.
She did tell him all, and had reason to thank God for the courage that made it a possible, even an easy, thing for her to do. Her truly noble benefactor and protector, receiving her communication as if he then heard it for the first time, assured her that in thus confiding in the freedom of his mind, and in his honor, she had set up a new and stronger claim to his interest and friendly care. She had but enlarged his obligation to his until then unknown correspondent for having given his children, to whom their governess had already truly endeared herself, so admirable a teacher, so precious a friend.
["But why," you will ask, "did not Madeline write to Miss Wimple?" Because that provident angel had, without explanation, exacted from her a promise that she would in no case write first. In truth, Miss Wimple foresaw her own various suffering, and sought to spare Madeline some cruel pangs, and herself the hard trial of disingenuous correspondence.]
And Mr. Osgood would have started at once for Hendrik, where he was not personally known to any one, to procure tidings of Miss Wimple and allay the anxiety of Mrs. Morris, had Madeline not found, that very day, her name in the Herald's list of letters waiting to be called for in the New York Post-Office. That letter was, indeed, for Madeline, and its contents were as follows:—
"To Miss MADELINE SPLURGE,—Miss Wimple, of Hendrik, is very ill, and poor, and friendless. It has been suggested to the writer of this that you can help her. If you can, and will, there is no time to lose. A FRIEND."
The "friend" was Simon Blount. Ever since the Athenæum was closed, he had hung anxiously about the place, frequently dropping in upon the neighbors to ask—quite by-the-byishly, and by chance, it seemed to them—after the health of Miss Wimple; and sometimes he waylaid the little servant, as she passed to and fro between the bookstore and the doctor's residence, and plied her with questions. On such occasions he was sure to make the little maid the depository of certain silver secrets, which forthwith she revealed to Miss Wimple in the shape of whole basketfuls of comfortable stuff, "from the Doctor." Adelaide had given the hint for this letter. Calling at the Athenæum one day, about a fortnight after Madeline's departure, her quick eye caught sight of a bit of paper lying on the counter, whereon was freshly written, "Madeline Splurge." Miss Wimple had been entering some trifling charge in the course of her small book-keeping, and, still dallying with the pen, a passing thought, less idle than anxious, had traced the name. On that slight foundation Adelaide had built a happy guess, though Simon knew it not,—and though he accepted her suggestion, it amazed him.
Let us lift the curtain now, on the last, an extraordinary, tableau.
In the Wimple nest a strange company are met at the bidding of
Madeline Splurge, who couches a flashing lance for the life and the
honor of her benefactress.