Mrs. Slimmens’ wild cry brought Hugh Ingelow into the room.  He crossed the room to where Mollie knelt, rigid and cold.

“Mollie!” he whispered, bending tenderly down; “my own dear Mollie!”

She looked up vaguely, and saw who it was.

“She was my mother, Hugh,” she said, and slipped heavily backward in his arms, white and still.

Mollie did not faint.  She lay a moment in a violent tremor and faintless, her face hidden on his shoulder; then she lifted her face, white as the dead—­white as snow.

“She was my mother, Hugh,” she repeated—­“my own mother.”

“Your mother, Mollie?  And I thought Carl Walraven—­”

“Oh, hush! not that name here.  He is nothing to me—­less than nothing.  I shall never see him again.”

“Are you not going home?”

“I have no home,” said Mollie, mournfully.  “I will stay here until she is buried.  After that—­’sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’  You will help me, Mr. Ingelow?” looking piteously up.  “I don’t know what to do.”

“I will help you,” he said, tenderly, “my poor little forlorn darling; but only on one condition—­that you will grant me a favor.”

“What?” looking at him wonderingly.

“That you will go and lie down.  You need sleep—­go with Mrs. Slimmens—­eat some breakfast, and try to sleep away the morning.  Don’t make yourself uneasy about anything—­all shall be arranged as well as if you were here.  You will do this for me, Mollie?”

“Anything for you, Hugh,” Mollie replied, hardly knowing what she said; “but I feel as though I should never sleep again.”

Nevertheless, when led away by Mrs. Slimmens, and a cup of warm tea administered, and safely tucked in a clean straw bed, Mollie’s heavy eyelids closed in a deep, dreamless sleep.  That blessed slumber which seals the eyes of youth, despite every trouble, wrapped her in its comforting arms for many hours.

It was high noon when Mollie awoke, refreshed in body and mind.  She rose at once, bathed her face and brushed her curls, and quitted the bedroom.

Mrs. Slimmens, in the little kitchen, was bustling about the midday meal.

“Your dinner is all ready, Miss Dane,” that worthy woman said, “and the young gentleman told me not on any account to allow you upstairs again until you’d had it.  Sit right down here.  I’ve got some nice broiled chicken and blancmange.”

“You’ve never gone to all this trouble and expense for me, I hope?” remonstrated Mollie.

“La, no; I hadn’t the money.  The young gentleman had ’em ordered here from the restaurant up-street.  Sit right down at once.”

“Dear, kind, considerate Hugh!” Mollie thought, as she took her place at the tidy table.  “Where is he now, Mrs. Slimmens?”

“Gone for his own dinner, miss, or his breakfast; I don’t know which, seein’ he’s had nothing all day but a cup of tea I gave him this morning.  He’s been and had the poor creeter upstairs laid out beautiful, and the room fixed up, and the undertaker’s man’s been here, a-measurin’ her for her coffin.  She’s to be buried to-morrow, you know.”