her dish of tea and what not, to her
mistress up-stairs. But Elizabeth this time would endure
neither her presence nor her proposal. Clam was obliged to go
down again leaving her mistress as she had found her. Alone
with herself.

Then, when the sun was long past the meridian, Elizabeth heard
upon the stair another step, of the only friend, as it seemed
to her, that she had. She raised her head and listened to it.
The step went past her door, and into the other room, and she
sat waiting. "How little he knows," she thought, "how much of
a friend he is! how little he guesses it. How far he is from
thinking that when he shall have bid me good bye -- somewhere --
he will have taken away all of help and comfort I have. --"

But clear and well defined as this thought was in her mind at
the moment, it did not prevent her meeting her benefactor with
as much outward calmness as if it had not been there. Yet the
quiet meeting of hands had much that was hard to bear.
Elizabeth did not dare let her thoughts take hold of it.

"Have you had what you wanted?" he said, in the way in which
one asks a question of no moment when important ones are
behind.

"I have had all I could have," Elizabeth answered.

There was a pause; and then he asked,

"What are your plans, Miss Elizabeth?"

"I haven't formed any. -- I couldn't not, yet."

"Do you wish to stay in the city, or to go out of it?"

"Oh to go out of it!" said Elizabeth, -- "if I could -- if I
knew where."

"Where is your cousin?"

"She was at Vantassel; but she left it for some friend's house
in the country, I believe. I don't want to be where she is."

Elizabeth's tears came again.

"It seems very strange --" she said presently, trying to put a
stop to them, but her words stopped.

"What?" said Winthrop.

"It seems very strange, -- but I hardly know where to go. I
have no friends near -- no near friends, in any sense; there
are some, hundreds of miles off, in distance, and further than
that in kind regard. I know plenty of people, but I have no
friends. -- I would go up to Wut-a-qut-o, if there was anybody
there," she added after a minute or two.

"Shahweetah has passed into other hands," said Winthrop.

"I know it," said Elizabeth; -- "it passed into mine."

Winthrop started a little, and then after another moment's
pause said quietly,

"Are you serious in wishing to go there now?"

"Very serious!" said Elizabeth, "if I had anybody to take care
of me.