The announcement was listened to with regret by at least one person present, but no objection could be interposed, and before the hour of midnight had arrived, Flora found herself wooing the coy embraces of slumber upon a down bed, in an elegantly furnished bed-chamber, one of a suite in a handsome villa mansion in the Regent’s Park.
She had parted with Hal quietly: neither had displayed emotion: what they felt was concealed from the eyes of all present. Their words were few, but each seemed to wish the other to understand that lightly to forget would not be possible.
It was some compensation to Hal for the rude shattering of the ideal fabric he had so blissfully reared, to receive from Mr. Wilton the assurance that the doors of his house would ever be open to him, that he had a right to enter whenever he pleased, and that he might, in fact, view it as a second home.
“The saviour of my child deserves no less at my hands,” he added.
When Hal Vivian encountered poor Lotte Clinton, he had therefore no hesitation in conveying her direct to the new residence of Flora Wilton. Flora had frequently inquired after her, and had hoped that she would visit her, for she had not forgotten her display of womanly sympathy when she was distracted by a combination of troubles, and she was anxious to express her grateful sense of Lotte’s kindheartedness, and her hope that some day she might be able to repay it.
But Lotte came not. Flora imagined that her brother had conveyed her to some place of residence near his own, and though at times uneasy thoughts would rise and suggest that she might have escaped the horrors of the burning house only to fall into new dangers, still she hoped that she should see her again, smiling and cheerful, as she had been, and in a better position than ever.
Hal knew this, and decided that he could not do better than conduct Lotte to her when he found her in a condition of despair and destitution which had given up all other hope of relief but what self-destruction would afford.
As the cab pursued its way, Lotte sat with her face buried in her hands, weeping. She wished to restrain the violence of her emotions--to attain a calmness which would enable her to speak to Hal with some degree of steadiness--but in vain; she had not power to resist the torrent--the floodgates were borne away, and she could only lean in the corner of the vehicle, and let her tears pursue their impetuous course.