"Many years? Three—or five?"
"More—more, I am afraid, my little girl—perhaps in twenty years—if he is still alive."
He scarcely knew what impulse prompted him then to tell her the truth. He repented it the next moment, for, after a horrified stare into his face, the child suddenly flung herself down upon the gravelled path and burst into tears, accompanied by passionate shrieking sobs and wild convulsive movements of her limbs.
"He shall come out—he shall come out!" Hubert heard her cry between her gasps for breath. "He can't do without me. Take me to him, or I shall die!"
In utter dismay Hubert tried persuasion, argument, rebuke, for some time in vain. At last he turned away from her, and began walking up and down a short stretch of the drive, bitterly regretting the impulse that had caused him to take the care of this strange child, even for a few moments, on his hands. But he had promised to get rid of her, and he must do so, if only for Enid's sake. It would never do to let this little wild creature go on roaming about the village, asking questions about her father. And there were better motives at work within the young man's breast. It seemed to him that he had brought a duty on himself—that he was at least responsible for Andrew Westwood's forlorn and neglected child.
He had not paced the drive for many minutes before the sobs began to grow fainter. Finally they ceased, and the child drew herself into a crouching position, with her head resting against the steep mossy bank just within the gate. Seeing her so quiet, Hubert thought that he might venture to speak to her again.
"You must not cry so bitterly," he said, almost as he might have spoken to a grown-up person, not to a child.
"Grieving can do your poor father no good. Wait and grow up quickly. He may come out of prison some day, and want his little daughter. If I take you to a place where you can be taught to be a good girl, like other girls, will you stay there?"
The child raised her head and fixed her dark eyes upon him.
"Not to the workhouse?" she said apprehensively.