Having deliberately read letter and paper, she put the former in her pocket, and returned the latter with a stately yet graceful inclination of the head, that would have been creditable in Mdm.  Recamier’s salon.

“I have expected you for some weeks, an earlier letter from Doctor Grantlin having prepared me for your arrival; but it appears you have not been released from prison by the pardon he anticipated?”

“No, madam; the authorities who caused my arrest and imprisonment, considered the discovery of the printed door a complete refutation of the accusation against me, and ordered my release.  I come here not as a pardoned criminal, but as an unfortunate victim of circumstantial evidence; acquitted of all suspicion by a circumstance even stranger than those which seemed to condemn me.  In the darkest days of my desolation, Doctor Grantlin believed me innocent, honored me with his confidence and friendship, soothed my mother’s dying hour; and he will rejoice to learn that acquittal anticipated the mockery of a pardon.  Only his generous encouragement emboldened me to hope for a temporary shelter here.”

“Then you have no desire to become a permanent resident?”

“At present, I shall be grateful if allowed to enjoy the privilege of hiding my sore heart for a while from the gaze of a world that has cruelly wronged me.  I want to rest where wicked men and women do not pollute the air, where I can try to forget the horrors of convict life; and the rest I need is not idleness, it is labor of some kind that will so fully employ my hands and brain, that when I lie down at night my sad, aching heart and wounded soul can find balm in sleep.  Locked at night into a dark cell has made existence for nearly eighteen months a mere hideous vigil, broken by fitful nightmare.  To see only pure faces, to listen to sweet feminine voices that never knew the desecration of blasphemy, to exchange the grim, fetid precincts of a penitentiary for a holy haven such as this, is indeed a glimpse of paradise to a tortured spirit.”

“Have you special reasons for wishing to shun observation?”

The dim eyes probed like some dull blade that tears the tissues.

“Yes, madam, special cause to want to be forgotten by the public, who have stared me at times almost to frenzy.”

“You are an orphan, I am told; with no living relatives in America.”

“I am an orphan; and think I have no relative in the United States.”

“In the very peculiar circumstances that surround and isolate you, I should imagine you would esteem it a great privilege to cast your lot here, and become one of the permanently located Sisters of the ‘Anchorage’.  Ours is a noble and consecrated mission.”

“Knowing literally nothing of your institution, except that it is a hive of industrious good women, offering a home and honest work to homeless and innocent unfortunates, I could not pledge myself to a life which might not prove suitable on closer acquaintance.  Take me in; give me employment that will prevent me from being a tax upon your hospitality and mercifully shelter me from pitiless curiosity and gossip.”