“Alas!” replied Abel, “the shirts and coats and trousers to which they once belonged are long since worn out; and now I have no clothes left but the clothes I have on.”
“This was a very fine suit once,” said Marguerite. “The cloth is excellent.”
“Yes, I had it made by a fashionable tailor; for I intended to wear it when I went to visit influential people, and try and interest them in my—in my—”
Here Abel heaved a sigh, while a look of deeper gloom shadowed his face than the girl had yet observed upon it.
“Pray tell me what troubles you,” said Marguerite. “Do tell me. Perhaps I may be able to comfort you.” Then, as he made no response, she went on: “Have those of whom you sought aid turned a cold shoulder upon you? Have they refused to help you with this Magic Hen’s Nest? Why, I thought, sir, ’twas a profound secret; that you had told nobody about it.”
“No, no; I don’t allude to this, but to something else—to something which I cannot think of without an agony of mind I hope God may spare you from ever suffering. I had forgotten all about it; I had not thought of it for ever so long, till our conversation brought it back to me. Oh! do let me forget it—forget it for ever.”
“I guessed when I first saw you, poor dear man, that there was a heavy burden on your heart,” spoke Marguerite inwardly. “Now your own lips have confessed it to me. Oh! if I only knew you better, I might be able to console you.”
She refrained, however, from asking again what his cross was; but little doubting that ’twas connected in some way with another invention, she determined on a future occasion to ask him to tell her the history of his life. “And who knows but I may find the means of bringing back the smiles to his mournful visage. If I do, ’twill be a slight return for all the kindness he has shown me.”
Here Marguerite cast another glance about the forlorn-looking chamber, and wondered how he had been able to pay the first quarter’s rent of her store. “He must have pinched himself to do it,” she thought to herself. “Oh! what other man in New York with only one suit of clothes would have been so generous?”
And now, ere she withdrew, her feelings got the better of her judgment, and she burst into a fervent expression of thanks for his great benevolence and sympathy, and hoped that for her sake he had not deprived himself of money which he really needed. But Abel sharply interrupted her.