"And how came you to be here?" he smiled. "Your white dress looks out of place in this garret."
She lifted herself straight up, with her back to the wall. Claire, who was thus dislodged from the place at her feet woke, and began to cry.
"I heard that Mr. Gillespie was dead," came from lips so stiff with fright or some other deep emotion that I wondered they could form the words. "I loved Mr. Gillespie, and I brought my grief here."
She was still standing pressed against the wall, her hands behind her; and disguise the fact as I would, I could see that her teeth were chattering with something more than cold, or even such fear as might follow the sudden death of a near friend and benefactor.
"Will you not come below?" urged the doctor, taking up Claire to his fatherly breast.
"Never!" her lips seemed to cry; but I heard no sound, and when the doctor, giving me the child, threw his arm about her and drew her away, she yielded pliantly enough, though with a steady look into his face I did not understand then nor for a long time afterwards.
At the stair-head we met Alfred. Perhaps he had heard us go up, perhaps he had simply thought of searching the attic himself. His recoil and the exclamation he made were simultaneous.
"You have found her!" was his cry, a cry which did not refer to the child. Then in reproachful tones: "Hope, why should you give us such a scare? Had we not enough to face without having our hearts wrung with terror for you?"
Her answer was a murmur. With the first moment of encounter with this man her face had become a mask.