IN PLACE AND IN ACCOUNT NOTHING.
I. Henry IV.; v.—I.

Notwithstanding her previous visit, Mrs. Fenton found it no easy matter to guide Helen to the place where Ninitta had taken refuge.

The poorer classes of foreigners in any city are led by similarity of language and occupations to gather into neighborhoods according to their nationality, and the Italians are especially clannish. The fruit-venders and organ-grinders form separate colonies, each distinguished by the peculiarities incident to the calling of its inhabitants, the crooked courts in the fruit-sellers' neighborhood being chiefly marked to outward observance by the number of two-wheeled hand-carts which, out of business hours, are crowded together there.

Ninitta was found in a room tolerably clean for that portion of the city, the old fruit woman who was its mistress having retained more of the tidiness of thrifty peasant ancestors than most of her class. One room was made to accommodate the mother and seven children, and during the absence of the former from home the premises were left in charge of a girl just entering her teens, who, when Helen and Edith reached the place, was engaged in preparing the family dinner of maccaroni. The younger members of the family had just returned from school, and were noisily clamoring for their share, and all together relating the incidents of the day.

Upon a bed in one corner lay the object of their search, her face flushed, her hair disordered, her eyes wild and vacant. To all appearances she was in a high fever, and she took no heed of Edith, who approached the bed and spoke to her. At the sound of Mrs. Greyson's voice, however, the sick girl gave a cry and raised herself into a sitting posture.

"No, no!" she exclaimed in Italian, excitedly, "I will not! I will not!"

Helen drew off her gloves and sat down upon the dingy bed beside
Ninitta, regarding her with pitying eyes.

"You shall not," she answered, in the girl's own language. "You need do nothing but what you choose."

The soft tone seemed to calm Ninitta. She allowed Helen to arrange the soiled and crumpled pillows, and yielded when her self-constituted nurse wished her to lie down again. The latter procured a bowl of water, and with her handkerchief bathed the sick girl's face, soothing her with womanly touches which waked in Edith a new feeling of sympathy and tenderness. Mrs. Greyson's white fingers, contrasting strongly with the Italian's clear dark skin, smoothed the tangled hair from the hot forehead, and all the while her rich, pure voice murmured comforting words, of little meaning in themselves, perhaps, but sweet with the sympathy and womanhood which spoke through them.

Edith meanwhile was not idle. She applied herself to hushing the boisterous children, and to bringing something like quiet out of the tumult of the crowded room. She assisted the girl with her maccaroni, gravely listening to the principles which governed its equitable distribution, with her own hands giving the grimy little children the share belonging to each. An air of comfort seemed to come over the frowsy room after Edith had quietly set a chair straight here, picked up something from the floor there, and arranged the ragged shade at the window. Even the little Italians, half barbarians as they were, felt the change, and were more subdued.

Ninitta, too, was calmed and soothed, and, with Helen's cool hand upon her hot brow, she sank presently into a drowse.

"Mrs. Fenton," Helen whispered, fanning her sleeping patient, "Ninitta cannot remain here. I must take her home with me. I think she had better run the risk of being moved than to be ill in this crowded room."

"But," remonstrated Edith, somewhat aghast at this summary procedure, "you do not even know what is the matter with her."

"No," Helen returned lightly, "but I shall probably discover."

"Not by finding it something contagious, I hope," her friend said, laying her hand upon Mrs. Greyson's forehead with a slight, caressing touch.

"Can you get me a hack?" Helen asked of the girl who kept the house.

But the girl had no idea how to obtain one of those vehicles, which she had been accustomed to see driving about with a certain awe, but without the hope of ever being able to do more than admire them from a distance, unless, indeed, she should have the great good fortune of going to a funeral, when perhaps she might even ride in one, as did little Sally McMann of the next court, when her mother died. Mrs. Fenton therefore went herself for the carriage, finding remonstrance in vain to change her companion's decision.

During her absence Ninitta awakened, and, while seeming more rational, was less quiet than before. She repulsed her visitor with angry looks and muttered defiance. Knowing perfectly well the cause of the girl's agitation, Helen knew, also, that it was best to go directly to the root of the matter, and she did so unshrinkingly.

"You are wrong," she said in Ninitta's ear. "It is you he loves. You are to go home with me because he wishes it."

At first the sick girl seemed to gather no meaning from these words, but as Helen repeated the assurance again and again, in different phrases and with Herman's name, she became passive, as if she at least caught the spirit if not the actual significance.

Mrs. Fenton had some difficulty in finding a carriage, and by the time she returned Ninitta had yielded herself submissively to Helen's guidance.

Mrs. Greyson saw that her charge was carefully protected against the cold, a matter which the mildness of the day rendered easy, and, supported by the two ladies, the model was able to walk down stairs to the carriage.

During the drive homeward Helen lay back thinking hotly, and flushed with excitement. Ninitta sank into a doze, and Mrs. Fenton sat looking at her friend with the air of one who has discovered in an acquaintance characteristics before wholly unsuspected. She hesitated a little, and then, mastering her shyness, she bent forward and kissed Helen's hand.

The other submitted in silence. Indeed, the exaltation of her mood seemed to lift her above her surroundings so that she felt a strange remoteness from her companion. Yet she was conscious of a vague twinge of annoyance at Edith's act, although she could neither have excused nor defined the feeling. Mrs. Fenton not infrequently aroused in her a curious mingling of attraction and repulsion; and it was under the influence of the latter that she answered brusquely her friend's next remark.

"How did you quiet Ninitta?" Edith asked.

"By telling her lies," returned Helen wearily and laconically.

"What!"

"She is in no condition to be dealt with rationally," continued Mrs. Greyson, in a tone explanatory, but in no way defensive, "so I said whatever would soothe her."

Edith sat in silent dismay. Apparently the woman before her, by whose generous self-forgetfulness she had been touched, was perfectly untroubled by the idea of speaking a falsehood, a state of mind so utterly beyond Edith's experience as to be incomprehensible to her. She could not bring herself to remonstrate, but it pained her that such philanthropy should be stained by what she considered so wrong.

Mrs. Fenton was perhaps equally mistaken in her opinion of Helen's regard for truth and of her philanthropy. Mrs. Greyson had a deep repugnance to falsehood, and Arthur Fenton had often good-humoredly jeered at what he called her Puritanic scrupulousness in this respect. On an occasion such as at present, however, the use of an untruth would cause her not even a second thought, her reason so strongly supporting her course as even to overcome her instincts; a fact which a moralist might deplore but which still remains a fact.

Her philanthropy, upon the other hand, although seeming to Edith so disinterested, was largely instigated by a desire to aid Grant Herman. Just what she wished or expected him to do, she could not have told, her actions being no more regulated by strict logic than those of most women; but she felt that it was the office of friendship to see, if possible, that no harm came to the Italian through the jealousy which both herself and Herman knew to be but too well founded. She determined to take Ninitta home and do for her all that was necessary, in order that the sculptor be spared the remorse which would pursue him if harm came to his old betrothed. She was not without a secret feeling, moreover, scarcely acknowledged to herself, that she owed some reparation to the girl whose lover's heart she had won, no matter how undesignedly.

Reaching home, she got Ninitta to bed and sent for Dr. Ashton. Then she dispatched a note to Grant Herman, saying:

"Ninitta is with me; give yourself no uneasiness."