CHAPTER XXXVI.

AN OLD WEDDING-RING.

Once in Charlotte's life before now, she had remembered her father doing
what she considered a strangely hard thing. A valet in whom he had
always reposed full confidence had robbed him of one hundred pounds. He
had broken open his master's desk at night and taken from thence notes
to that amount. The deed had been clumsily done, and detection was very
easy. The name of this valet was Wright. He was young and good-looking,
and had been lately married; hitherto he had been considered all that
was respectable. When his crime was brought home to him, he flew to seek
Charlotte, then a very young girl; he flung himself on his knees in her
presence, and begged of her to ask her father to show mercy to him.
Scarcely half a dozen words of passionate, terrified entreaty had passed
his trembling lips, before there came a tap at the door and the young
wife rushed in to kneel by his side. Together they implored; their words
were poor and halting, but the agony of their great plea for mercy went
straight to the young generous heart they asked to intercede for them.
Charlotte promised to do what she could. She promised eagerly, with hope
in her tones.

Never afterwards did she forget that day. Long indeed did the faces of
those two continue to haunt her, for she had promised in vain; her
father was obdurate to all her entreaties; even her tears, and she had
cried passionately, had failed to move him. Nothing should save Wright
from the full penalty of his crime. He was arrested, convicted, and sent
to prison.

From that moment the Harmans lost sight of the couple. Charlotte had
tried, it is true, to befriend Hester Wright, but the young woman with
some pride had refused all assistance from those whom she considered
strangely hard and cruel. It was some years now since anything had been
heard of either of them. Charlotte, it is true, had not forgotten them,
but she had put them into a back part of her memory, for her father's
conduct with regard to Wright had always been a sore puzzle to her. And
now, on this day of all days, she was driving in a cab by the side of
Hester Wright to see her dying husband. She had sent a message home by
the coachman which would allay all immediate anxiety on her account, and
she sat back in the cab by the side of the poor and sad woman with a
sense of almost relief, for the present. For an hour or two she had
something outside of herself and her home