Yet, perhaps--who can tell?--God
has especially set you to this task. At any rate, I have little choice.
I am at my wits' end. Elspeth, the mother of this child, is not long
dead; and here is the girl, beautiful, unprotected; and here am I,
almost helpless. She is in debt to the Cresswells, and they are pressing
the claim to her service. Take her if you can get her--it is, I fear,
her only chance. Mind you--if you can persuade her; and that may be
impossible."
"Where is she now?"
Miss Smith glanced out at the darkening landscape, and then at her
watch.
"I do not know; she's very late. She's given to wandering, but usually
she is here before this time."
"I saw her in town this afternoon," said Mrs. Vanderpool.
"Zora? In town?" Miss Smith rose. "I'll send her to you tomorrow," she
said quietly. Mrs. Vanderpool had hardly reached the Oaks before Miss
Smith was driving toward town.
A small cabin on the town's ragged fringe was crowded to suffocation.
Within arose noisy shouts, loud songs, and raucous laughter; the
scraping of a fiddle and whine of an accordion. Liquor began to appear
and happy faces grew red-eyed and sodden as the dances whirled. At the
edge of the orgy stood Zora, wild-eyed and bewildered, mad with the pain
that gripped her heart and hammered in her head, crying in tune with the
frenzied music--"the End--the End!"
Abruptly she recognized a face despite the wreck and ruin of its beauty.
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