“Don’t say you are homeless,” he cried; “you have a friend. Let me be your friend. Mrs. Parrot shall give you a home for the present ... if you will accept it.”
She looked at him with stupefied eyes as one who doubts her senses, then said: “We have no claim upon you. Oh! how noble-hearted! Nelly, Nelly, come to me, come to me!”
The child ran to her mother, and, being frightened by the passionate despair in her voice, hid her face in her lap and burst into tears. But Dolly’s eyes remained dry—lost nothing of their wild brilliancy. She dragged her child to her, and swayed to and fro with tearless sobs that shook and convulsed her.
“I have deserved this,” she presently moaned. “I was faithless to the truest love God ever blessed a woman with. Why was he taken from me? My child was starving, and the sight of her wasted body drove me mad with grief. I never loved Mr. Conway—he knew it ... He has left me! Oh! he is a coward to leave me! What am I to do? I am a lonely woman—I have this child to feed and clothe—I have not a relative to turn to—and now we are homeless! O God! this is too much, too much!”
She hid her face in her child’s hair.
Nothing but the dread that the truth, at that moment, might kill her to hear, prevented him, as he listened to her heart-broken words, from kneeling to her and calling her wife. He watched her with a strange steadfastness of gaze, and with a face more bloodless than hers. The impulse to avow himself had recoiled and driven the blood to his heart; a faintness overcame him, but he battled with the deadly weakness, and the better to do so, rose and strode across the room and stood near his wife and child, looking down upon them.
“I will help you to the utmost of my power,” he said, speaking slowly, and with a difficulty that presently passed. “Whilst I live, neither you nor your child will be friendless. Trust me, and make me happy by knowing me to be your friend.”
She raised her feverishly-lighted eyes, and said in a quick, febrile whisper: “You cannot take the burden of the three of us upon yourself.”
“No! I would not raise a finger to serve your husband now. He has money, but he left you in want all day yesterday, and you have been alone through the night... But I will befriend you and your child. Whatever I can do shall be done. I am not rich—I would to God I were, for your sake. Were I to pay this debt, I should only delay the loss of your furniture for a few days; others would come, and I should not have the money to deal with them.”
“What am I to do?” she wailed, clinging to her child.