“Who never loved, ne’er suffered; he feels nothing

Who nothing feels but for himself alone;

And when we feel for others, reason reels,

O’erloaded from her path, and man runs mad.

As love alone can exquisitely bless,

Love alone feels the marvellous of pain—

Opens new veins of torture in the soul,

And wakes the nerves where agonies are born.

Young.

Many a weary hour, on the night of Helen’s departure, did Lotte sit watching by her little charge while it slumbered, plying her ever-busy needle in making its clothes, with which it was very scantily provided.

Ever and anon she raised her eyes from her work, to gaze upon the sweet face of the little hapless innocent, or to listen to its breathing, soft and low, fearful that it might awake and weep, and she be unable to pacify it.

After ten o’clock had chimed, she began to find the hours pass slowly and painfully. Still, however, the child slept, and still she worked on. At length the deep tone of the church-clock bell gave forth the hour of one, and she became affrighted at Helen’s absence.

Her eyes ached painfully. She had worked many hours, and had continued to do so, if only to pass away the lone, long vigil she was keeping.

She had been weeping, too, for she was weak in body, and that created a depression of spirits which found relief only in tears. She was harrassed by strange fears and vague doubts. Why, why was Helen so long away? What could have happened?—some dreadful accident, perhaps—she thought of nothing but that; for what else would or could keep a young mother from her first-born in the very commencement of its babyhood. She grew sick at heart; for if her painful foreboding proved only true, what would be the result?

Hour after hour came and went; but though she listened to every footfall as it approached, and believed, until it went past the house, that it must be that of her late companion, she was disappointed in every instance. Helen came not.

Once or twice the little babe awoke and cried, but she knelt down by its side, laid her own soft, innocent cheek close to its little velvet face, and soothed its low, fretful sobbing again into slumber.

During the long night she was conscious of a strange tremulous motion in the room.

It was not that she shivered with the cold, or trembled from nervousness, but the sensation was that of vibration, as though heavy waggons were perpetually passing along the street, but making no sound.

Several times her attention was aroused by a loud clicking repeated at intervals. A peculiar, unusual sound it was, but she heeded it little. She reflected that in the many, many nights she had sat up to work, she had often heard unaccountable noises.

The blue dawn stole into the room through the window curtains, and paling the feeble ray of her solitary candle, found her wan and haggard, alone with the child. And now the little creature, needing nourishment, awoke, and cried piteously, and would not be pacified. Lotte was greatly distressed at first, and wept with the child, for she knew not what to do.

But she remembered that it did not become her in the position of trust in which she was placed to be faint of heart. It was necessary to be calm, composed, and collected, in order that she might deliberate upon the best course to pursue.

She paced the room with the child, and presently remembered that upon an upper floor there dwelt a young married woman, whose husband, a house-painter, was away engaged in his business at a gentleman’s mansion in the country. This young woman, Lotte knew had a child about three months old, and to her she resolved to go for advice and assistance in her almost distracting dilemma.

Strange, when she tried to open her room-door, it resisted her strongest efforts. At first she thought it was locked, but she perceived that at the top it pressed against the casing forcibly.

With a desperate wrench she forced it open, and made her way up the stairs, feeling the strange tremulous vibration more than ever. She found the room-door of the young person she sought much in the same condition as her own, and she perceived, on effecting a forcible entrance, that the tenant of the room was hastily dressing herself. She wore on her features a terrified expression, and when she saw Lotte she hastily inquired what had brought her there.

In a few brief words Lotte explained the condition in which she had been left with the infant. The young woman, with motherly instinct, at once took the child from Lotte, and quickly stilled its cries with nature’s nourishment, but, as she did so, she said with the same alarmed look in her eyes—

“What is the matter with the house?”

“The house!” echoed Lotte, every little incident connected with the sounds she had heard during the night in a moment flashed through her mind.

“Yes,” returned the young woman, “I seemed to have shaken and rocked in my bed all night; I have hardly slept a wink until I could bear it no—hark!”

A low, dull, heavy rumbling crash was plainly heard by both; the house seemed to swing backwards and forwards, both felt a frightful giddiness seize them, the flooring seemed to heave up with them, then followed a dull, heavy boom, and the house seemed to shake to the centre.

Both girls shrieked, for they saw fissures like forked lightning run down the walls, and at the same moment loud shouts rose up in the street, mingled with screams and cries for help, and then the house, though quieter, began again its tremulous motion.

“Merciful Heaven!” gasped Lotte, “a house has fallen down, and this will fall too!”

“Take my child!” cried the woman, hardly able to speak from a faintness which had seized her. “Let us run out into the street!”

It was following a natural impulse which had brought every one of the inmates from their beds, and hurried them into the street too. Lotte, still holding the woman’s child, found time to snatch up her mantle and bonnet, before she followed the example of the young woman.

A large number of persons had already assembled. Bricklayers were speedily at hand, a strong body of police were soon on the spot, and efforts were at once commenced to clear away the dÉbris of the fallen house, under which many poor creatures were presumed to be buried.

The house in which Lotte had resided, and from which she had just escaped, was one of a block of eight. Erected before the Building Act came into operation, the wonder was, not that they should now have come down, but that they had not fallen before. The corner house, in its descent, dragged two others with it, leaving the rest in so tottering a condition, that none of the residents were allowed to return to them; men were however, appointed, under the police surveyor, to remove the most dangerous portions of the quivering walls, and the furniture in the dwellings, as soon as they were sufficiently supported to admit of men entering them with safety.

Lotte was thus once more thrown upon the world, under trying and painful circumstances. Worn out as she was, she did not, however, give way to helpless despair, but nerved herself for the task she saw she should have to undergo.

She returned to the young woman, and recovered Helen’s child, which she pressed to her own gentle bosom, and covered it carefully with her mantle. She then made her way to the police station, gave a general description of her little property to the inspector, told him she would send a person to fetch it, and then made her way at once whither she knew she should be befriended, and where she could obtain all assistance in rearing Helen’s child, until Helen came forward to claim it—if she ever came at all.

Lotte believed that she knew Helen’s true nature; and to know this was to make her convinced that scarcely anything short of death would have detained her from her child—that child born under such strange, mysterious, and unhappy circumstances.

Lotte, it need hardly be said, directed her footsteps to the residence of Mr. Bantom, or that she was there warmly welcomed; but after the first few words of greeting, she suddenly alighted upon a full comprehension of a startling difficulty in her position.

Helen had obtained from her a solemn promise not to disclose that she had become the mother of a child, unless with her sanction.

When Mrs. Bantom, in her fussiness and gladness at seeing Lotte, drew aside her mantle to take it off, she discovered the child.

“Dear heart!” she cried, with wondrous surprise; “what a blessed little babby!”

Then Mrs. Bantom turned her eyes upon Lotte, inquiringly, and on seeing her thin, alabaster face, she gave a gulp, and uttered an ejaculation.

The instant the worthy, humble creature gave vent thus to the suspicion that flashed through her mind, Lotte understood her position. It was impossible to keep down a scarlet flush that covered her neck and face, or to prevent it dying away, and leaving her face of a deathly hue, or to help feeling as if she should sink down upon the earth and die, almost happy in the notion that her spirit should be so released from this world of care and pain.

Mrs. Bantom noticed the spasm which passed over her features and said nothing, though she felt sorely—sorely grieved; but she removed Lotte’s cloak and bonnet, and forced her gently in a chair.

“You are ill, child, and weak,” said the good woman, in a husky voice; “and don’t ought to be out—in—in—-your condition.”

Lotte tried to speak, but her tongue clave to the roof of her mouth.

“Oh, my child—my child!” sobbed out Mrs. Bantom; “my poor motherless girl—what has happened? Tell me, child—all; I—I—won’t think harshly of you, nor speak unkindly to you; and I may help you—I may—with God’s help, I may.”

Poor Lotte! This undeserved suspicion was very hard to hear. She looked back through her past life, and felt that she ought not to have been thus mistrusted; but she recollected that Mrs. Bantom knew little more, of her than that she was a young girl, living quite alone, and was thus open to temptation, or to be led astray. It was natural she should harbour such a thought as that which now evidently possessed her mind; and, however much it might rankle in heart, Lotte forgave her.

As soon as she could speak, she said—

“Mrs. Bantom, you wrong me. This child is not mine. At present a mystery surrounds its birth, which I am not at liberty to explain. I thought, indeed, Mrs. Bantom, that I should not have had even to say so much to you; for, of all who know me, I should suspect you of being the last who could or would think so very ill of me.”

Mrs. Bantom was now all the other way. She was only too delighted to catch at the very smallest assurance of Lotte’s innocence, and she over and over again expressed her readiness and desire to be of service to her, and, in truth, she afforded her assistance she could not have dispensed with, inasmuch as the good lady had recently presented her husband with a tenth blessing, and she was, therefore, able to take the child of Helen Grahame, and nourish it as her own.

At the expiration of a fortnight, Lotte had sufficiently recovered, by care and self-attention, her strength, and, by the aid and help of Bantom, to instal herself once more in an apartment of her own—in a house, which, by the way, she satisfied herself was strongly built, and not likely to tumble down as soon as she took possession. She had, also, so far recovered her position, that the persons by whom (through the instrumentality of Flora Wilton) she had been formerly employed gave her again, upon application, so much work that she was enabled to employ an assistant, who could undertake the part of wet nurse as well, for Lotte would not part with the custody of Helen’s child under any advice, suggestion, or proposal.

She had heard nothing of Helen. She was wholly at a loss to conjecture what had become of her, and she meditated one evening a visit to her house in the Park, with a hope that she might gain some tidings of her.

With her brother as yet she had not communicated, but she had contrived, through Bantom—who, in his homely way, would perform any meed of service for her with the greatest cheerfulness, though he was not altogether a safe agent to employ on secret service—to ascertain that he was well, though perplexed and grieved at her mysterious absence.

All this time, had she thought of Mark Wilton?

Ah, yes! Not with any notion of a love-passage ever occurring between them during the vicissitudes and trials of her patiently endured life of toil, because, whenever such vision presented itself before her, she chased it away, as a mockery, a delusion, and a snare. No; she thought not of him as a lover in anticipation. She did not even think, in her heart, that he looked upon her in any other way than in a spirit of kindness—with perhaps more earnestness than men commonly look upon a pleasant female face. But she thought of him as one whom she would, of all men in the world, have soonest chosen to be her life-companion. Their stations being widely apart, she knew, or thought she knew, that an event so instinct with happiness could never, never come to pass.

She would sometimes squeeze her hands together, and sigh very deeply—some would say bitterly—as she ejaculated—

“How happy I am to think we do not meet! How very happy I ought to be that I do not see him often—I should so love him. And she who wins him, how beneficent will Heaven be to her.”

One evening, alone with the child, as she sat bending over it caressingly, and thinking thus, Mark Wilton stood before her.

She uttered a faint cry and rose to her feet. She knew not whether to welcome him frankly, or to wait until he spoke.

He recognised her embarrassment, and betrayed some confusion also, for he saw the child upon her knee. His colour went and came, and his heart heat violently. He did not look so pleasantly at her as before.

“I must beg to be excused for my intrusion,” he said, in a low grave tone; “I come, however, to prepare you for a visit from your brother. Are you prepared to face him?”

There was something in his tone and manner so harsh and changed from the style in which he had previously addressed her; so different, indeed, from the expression his face wore when, looking up, her eyes suddenly encountered his beaming on her, for no other word would fitly give their expression, that involuntarily she felt hurt and indignant.

A reproach was implied. She felt that she had deserved no reproach—at least from him. His curtness seemed to her out of place, and if she refused to think it impertinent, she felt that it was as unjust as it appeared unkind.

She turned her clear, intelligent eyes upon him, and while a roseate hue spread itself over her face, she responded to his words by the monosyllable, uttered in a tone of inquiry—

“Sir?”

Again he looked at the little laughing, dark-eyed babe which she held so lovingly in her arms, and his blood seemed to freeze in his veins.

“I really,” he said abruptly, “know not how to address you—I suppose by the married appellative.”

Lotte felt her face and forehead burn as if they were on fire. Her usually mild eye glittered like a diamond.

“I really cannot see, Mr. Wilton,” she answered, “the slightest necessity for your afflicting yourself with any supposition concerning one so humble as myself.”

He was nettled by her glance, and by the manner of her speech.

“It is easy to see,” he said, “that you have fled from your brother to form some connection of which you were convinced beforehand he would not approve, and that you still fear to face him by striving to keep your abode secret from him, or you are under the command to do so of the base, the contemptible, the—sneaking, the—the d——d scoundrel who has cajoled you into taking the most unhappy course you have adopted.”

He looked round fiercely, and spoke loudly, as though he anticipated the individual he had loaded with such strong epithets would step forth to answer for himself.

Lotte became as white as a sheet, and trembled in every limb. Her lips quivered so that she could not speak; but she pointed to the door with a frantic gesture, as if bidding him begone.

“No!” he said, with an angry frown on his flushed brow, “I shall not begone until I have seen the rascal who has so grossly deceived you. He shall well explain the motives which have led him to induce you to descend to such unworthy artifices——”

“Hold!” almost shrieked Lotte, as unconsciously she pressed Helen’s child to her bosom; an act he noted almost with fury. “How dare you thus speak to me?—I—I—Mr. Wilton—I would, out of the reverence in which I hold your gentle sister, for the benefits she has conferred on me—speak to you with respect—but this outrage—this attack upon me drives me from myself. I did not expect to be thus cruelly insulted—by—by you.”

A gush of tears checked further utterance, and her voice dropped at the last word.

Truly in her day-dreams she had never pictured his face turned upon her with an expression so harsh as that which now it bore; and when in her imaginings his voice breathed its soft, melodious accents in her ear, it had no such tone as this. Mark felt his breast aflame, when he saw her weep, and heard the acknowledgment implied in the reference to himself. He would have given worlds, even at that moment, to have been enabled to have folded his arms tenderly round her, and kissed away those tears, which he had himself brought into her sweet eyes.

But there was the little child, yet close hugged to her bosom. If she were a wife, he had, he felt, been scandalously cozened out of a priceless treasure; if she dare lay claim to no such title, he could never think of her more—unless to loathe her very name.

He assumed a cold manner, although his breast was as a seething caldron, and recommenced.

“You may place, madam, what interpretation you please upon my language; and I am equally at liberty to interpret your conduct.——”

“I deny your right to do any such thing!” she interrupted, vehemently; “you are here unbidden sir. If you bear a message from my brother to me, I ask of you only to deliver it to me—and to leave me; if you have no such message, I request you to depart at once?”

“But——” exclaimed Mark, as if to explain.

“I will hear from you, sir, nothing more than my brother’s words, if you have been entrusted with them,” persisted Lotte, indignantly.

“You shall have them,” said Mark, in a freezing tone; “still, I imagined, as a friend——

“A friend!” echoed Lotte, bitterly.

“A friend!” roared Mark, with a rather startling emphasis, forgetting his assumed coldness.

“I loved and esteemed your sister, sir, as a friend,” exclaimed Lotte, in a tone of earnest feeling. She bit her lips to repress the sob that gushed up to her throat—-“but you——”

“I am answered!” he exclaimed in a low tone as she paused. “I had a weak and foolish fancy that—but it is dissipated, gone—for ever. I see now I stand but in the light of a meddlesome intruder, and have no title to ask from you any explanation of your mysterious conduct.”

“None whatever!” said Lotte firmly.

“Enough, madam,” he returned in an icy tone. “I have but then to say that your brother having, by means he will himself explain, discovered your abode, will be here to night to see you.”

Lotte bowed, and remained silent.

Mark twisted his hat round and round, looked at the door and gazed wistfully at her, but she stood immoveable, she pressed the infant to her bosom, and she never once raised her eyes to his.

Her face was white as marble, yet he was sure he never saw her look so handsome—so beautifully interesting. Mark lingered. Could she be a guilty creature?

It seemed impossible. Yet that child! coupled with her sudden flight, her continued and inexplicable absence. What other interpretation could he put upon her conduct?

He gave a slight “Hem,” to clear his voice, and then said—

“You will see your brother when he comes, this evening?”

Her eyelids slightly trembled.

“Why do you ask that question?” she asked, sternly.

“Because,” he returned almost fiercely, “he will not come to you if you wish him not to do so, for then he will know that he should not come.”

Lotte seemed to feel that she should fall into an hysterical paroxysm if this interview were to be prolonged. Yet her pride would not suffer her to yield, or to make an observation which would take the form of an admission either for or against herself.

“I shall be at home,” she observed, laconically.

“Which is to imply that he may come or remain away at his own inclining?” said Mark between his teeth.

She bowed her head without reply.

He gave one wild glance at her.

“Guilty and hardened!” he muttered, and rushed from the room.

She sank half-lifeless upon the sofa.

Mark, with furious haste, made his way to the office of Lotte’s brother, and with a kind of incoherent burst of strange remarks, informed him that he had had an interview with his sister.

“Did she say she wished to see me?” inquired Charley, with a full certainty of an affirmative reply.

“No,” returned Mark, shortly.

Charley looked at him with wondering eyes.

“Had she a fe—female—a young lady with her?” he inquired, expecting that the presence of Helen Grahame might have been the occasion of her reservation.

“No,” returned Mark, in the same voice; “she had a child in her arms.”

He strode abruptly away as he concluded.

Charley staggered back. A bullet through his body could not have inflicted upon him a greater shock.

A thousand conjectures flashed through his mind; and he paced his room in perturbed agony. Who could give him an inkling of her betrayer?—for that she had been basely betrayed he was sure. He could think of no one to aid him but Vivian, and him he knew not where to find.

Yet he did meet with him, and that while on his frenzied way to see his sister.

In a few hurried, agonized words, he told Hal, who was unacquainted with Lotte’s absence, of his discovery of her abode, of Mark’s visit and its result.

“I know Lotte,” said Hal, with marked impressiveness, and a knitted brow. “I know and esteem Mark Wilton also. I have occasion to do so, Charley; but he or any man had better think well ere they utter one sentence or half a word to defame Lotte’s truth or purity in my hearing.”

“Do you not think, then——”

“For shame, Charley. By Heaven I would stake my life upon her virtue and her innocence!”

“But Mark——”

“Is hasty, impetuous—forms his conclusions too rashly. You are about to visit her—judge for yourself. There may be some mystery hanging over her movements, but she can, she will explain all. I would hazard all I might ever hope for in this world that you will prove her only like golden ore—the purer for the fiery ordeal she may have had to undergo.”

“God bless you, Hal, for those comforting words! they have relieved my heart of much bitter agony,” cried Charley, fervidly.

“Ay!” responded Hal, shrugging his shoulders, “but you should have had faith in Lotte. She deserves it if ever one of her sex did. I am on my way to meet Mark Wilton, and it shall go hard but I disabuse his mind of any false notions he may have taken into his head.”

Charley wrung his hand.

“I heard that you were going abroad, Hal; is this true?” he asked.

“It was my intention,” he said, hastily; “it may be necessary yet. A singular event has, however, occurred to detain me for the present in England, and of which I am not at liberty now to speak, but you will, no doubt, some day hear; and if you should not—well my fate will be of little consequence then to anybody—least of all to myself.”

He waved his hand hurriedly, and hastened away.

Charley watched him for a moment, thoughtfully, and then he proceeded to his sister’s quiet and humble lodging.

On reaching the house he found the street door ajar, and he entered without noise. Previous inquiries had made him acquainted with the room she occupied, and he stole up to it silently.

Her room-door was partly open, and lie peeped in.

He saw Lotte seated at work upon the sofa. At her knee was a bassinet, in which lay a sleeping child.

A pang shot through his frame, and every limb quivered.

Lotte looked paler and thinner than when last they parted, and she seemed to have been weeping. She did not raise her eyes from her work, but her needle went swiftly and continuously.

He glided into the room and stood before her; she heard him not, nor did she see him.

In a low tone he said—

“Lotte!”

She started, rose up with her face towards him, and remained motionless; but she bent upon him an intensely appealing look, which seemed to ask him to look down through her eyes to her heart and read her soul.

He did gaze into their clear depths, then he turned his eyes upon the child; once more he looked into her luminous orbs shining upon him like stars, and he opened wide his arms.

“My dear sister!” he exclaimed, with deep emotion.

From her bosom burst an hysterical cry. She sprang forward and laid her head upon his breast, sobbing as though her poor sorely tried heart would break.