“She is a sweet-looking girl,” was the answer I received; “not beautiful, but interesting in expression and manner. She has brown hair,”—I shuddered—“brown eyes, and a mouth that would be lovely if it ever smiled. In fact, she is very attractive and so lady-like that I have desired to make a companion of her. But while attentive to all her duties, and manifestly grateful to me for the home I have given her, she shows so little desire for company or conversation that I have desisted for the last day or so from urging her to speak at all. But you asked me under what circumstances she came to me?”
“Yes, on what day, and at what time of day? Was she dressed well, or did her clothes look shabby?”
“She came on the very day I advertised; the eighteenth—yes, it was the eighteenth of this month; and she was dressed, so far as I noticed, very neatly. Indeed, her clothes appeared to be new. They needed to have been, for she brought nothing with her save what was contained in a small hand-bag.”
“Also new?” I suggested.
“Very likely; I did not observe.”
“O Miss Althorpe!” I exclaimed, this time with considerable vehemence, “I fear, or rather I hope, she is the woman I want.”
“You want!”
“Yes, I; but I cannot tell you for what just yet. I must be sure, for I would not subject an innocent person to suspicion any more than you would.”
“Suspicion! She is not honest, then? That would worry me, Miss Butterworth, for the house is full now, as you know, of wedding presents, and—But I cannot believe such a thing of her. It is some other fault she has, less despicable and degrading.”
“I do not say she has any faults; I only said I feared. What name does she go by?”
“Oliver; Ruth Oliver.”
Again I thought of the O. R. on the clothes at the laundry.
“I wish I could see her,” I ventured. “I would give anything for a peep at her face unobserved.”
“I don’t know how I can manage that; she is very shy, and never shows herself in the front of the house. She even dines in her own room, having begged for that privilege till after I was married and the household settled on a new basis. But you can go to her room with me. If she is all right, she can have no objection to a visitor; and if she is not, it would be well for me to know it at once.”
“Certainly,” said I, and rose to follow her, turning over in my mind how I should account to this young woman for my intrusion. I had just arrived at what I considered a sensible conclusion, when Miss Althorpe, leaning towards me, said with a whole-souled impetuosity for which I could not but admire her:
“The girl is very nervous, she looks and acts like a person who has had some frightful shock. Don’t alarm her, Miss Butterworth, and don’t accuse her of anything wrong too suddenly. Perhaps she is innocent, and perhaps if she is not innocent, she has been driven into evil by very great temptations. I am sorry for her, whether she is simply unhappy or deeply remorseful. For I never saw a sweeter face, or eyes with such boundless depths of misery in them.”
Just what Mrs. Desberger had said! Strange, but I began to feel a certain sort of sympathy for the wretched being I was hunting down.
“I will be careful,” said I. “I merely want to satisfy myself that she is the same girl I heard of last from a Mrs. Desberger.”