Mr. Conway sat down, and put his hat on the floor. His embarrassment, when his business should come to be known, might show a possibility of redemption, or at least satisfy us that most of the bad qualities he was accredited with might have been absorbed into his nature with the drink he swallowed. No thoroughly bad man could feel the nervousness that disturbed him.
“I have called, Mr. Hampden, to thank you, for your kindness to my little step-daughter. Indeed, sir, both my wife and myself thoroughly appreciate your goodness. Believe us, we do.”
“Pray do not trouble to thank me. She is a sweet child, and it makes me happy to have her,” answered Holdsworth, now at his ease, and studying his visitor with curiosity and surprise.
“Ah! she is indeed a sweet child. A perfect treasure to her mother, and quite a little sunbeam in my house—darkened, I regret to say, by misfortunes beyond my control to repair.”
“I am sorry to hear that.”
“I never can sufficiently deplore having adopted so ungrateful a vocation as dentistry. I was born to better things, Mr. Hampden. My father had an influential position under Government; but he died in poverty, and I was apprenticed by an uncle ... pray forgive me. These matters cannot interest you. Privations press heavily upon a man at my time of life. Dentistry seems to fail me; and yet, when I look around, I find no other calling which I am qualified to espouse.”
He sighed, and pulled out a pocket-handkerchief, with which he wiped his mouth.
Holdsworth was silent.
“Poverty I could endure, were I alone in the world,” continued Mr. Conway; “but it is unendurable to me to witness the best of women and the dearest of little children in want. My poor wife does not complain; but I witness her secret sufferings in her wasting form and irrepressible tears, and it goes to my heart, sir, to see her, and feel my miserable incapacity to relieve her.”
“Do you mean to say that she is actually in want?” exclaimed Holdsworth in a low voice.