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[235]
touched.
He excused himself, by saying that he would not have tampered with the girl, if he had known her to be virtuous.
‘I have done many wrong things,’ said he, ‘but thank God, no betrayal of confiding innocence weighs on my conscience.
I have always esteemed it the basest act of which man is capable.’
The imprisonment of the poor girl, and the forlorn situation in which she had been found, distressed him greatly.
When Friend Hopper represented that the silk had been stolen for his sake, that the girl had thereby lost profitable employment, and was obliged to return to her distant home, to avoid the danger of exposure, he took out a fifty dollar note, and offered it to pay her expenses.
‘Nay,’ said Isaac.
‘Thou art a very rich man, I presume.
I see in thy hand a large roll of such notes.
She is the daughter of a poor widow, and thou hast been the means of doing her great injury.
Give me another.’
Lord Henry handed him another fifty dollar note, and smiled as he said, ‘You understand your business well.
But you have acted nobly, and I reverence you for it. If you ever visit England, come to see me. I will give you a cordial welcome, and treat you like a nobleman.’
‘Farewell, friend,’ replied the Quaker.
‘Though much to blame in this affair, thou too hast behaved nobly.
Mayst thou be blessed in domestic life, and ’
Boston, J. P. Jewett and Company; Cleveland, Ohio: Jewett, Proctor and Worthington; London; Low and Company, 1854.
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