She summoned her courage now, and spoke in a voice full of feeling: 

“Oh, you must not feel that way.  You helped me just when I did not know what to do, and put me in the way of helping myself.  I shall never cease to thank you for your kindness to an utter stranger.  And now I am doing very well.”  She tried to smile, but the tears came unbidden instead.

“You poor child!” His tone was full of something deeper than compassion, and his eyes spoke volumes.  “Do you suppose I think you are doing well when I see you wearing the garb of a menial and working for people to whom you are far superior—­people who by all the rights of education and refinement ought to be in the kitchen serving you?”

“It was the safest thing I could do, and really the only thing I could get to do at once,” she tried to explain.  “I’m doing it better every day.”

“I have no doubt.  You can be an artist at serving as well as anything else, if you try.  But now that is all over.  I am going to take care of you.  There is no use in protesting.  If I may not do it in one way, I will in another.  There is one question I must ask first, and I hope you will trust me enough to answer it.  Is there any other—­any other man who has the right to care for you, and is unable or unwilling to do it?”

She looked up at him, her large eyes still shining with tears, and shuddered slightly.

“Oh, no!” she said.  “Oh, no, I thank God there is not!  My dear uncle has been dead for four years, and there has never been any one else who cared since Father died.”

He looked at her, a great light beginning to come into his face; but she did not understand and turned her head to hide the tears.

“Then I am going to tell you something,” he said, his tone growing lower, yet clear enough for her to hear every word distinctly.

A tall, oldish girl with a discontented upper lip stalked through the hall, glanced in at the door, and sniffed significantly, but they did not see her.  A short, baggy-coated man outside hovered anxiously around the building and passed the very window of that room, but the shade opposite them was down, and they did not know.  The low, pleasant voice went on: 

“I have come to care a great deal for you since I first saw you, and I want you to give me the right to care for you always and protect you against the whole world.”

She looked up, wondering.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I love you, and I want to make you my wife.  Then I can defy the whole world if need be, and put you where you ought to be.”

“Oh!” she breathed softly.

“Wait, please,” he pleaded, laying his hand gently on her little, trembling one.  “Don’t say anything until I have finished.  I know of course that this will be startling to you.  You have been brought up to feel that such things must be more carefully and deliberately done.  I do not want you to feel that this is the only way I can help you, either.  If you are not willing to be my wife, I will find some other plan.  But this is the best way, if it isn’t too hard on you, for I love you as I never dreamed that I could love a woman.  The only question is, whether you can put up with me until I can teach you to love me a little.”