"Come right in, ladies!" she welcomed them, when Chet had made the introductions. "You look very tired. I'm going to put you right in this room by yourselves, and you can rest as long as you wish till some one comes for you." And she led them into a neat, ugly little bedroom and left them to themselves.
Patricia made Virginie lie down on the bed, while she established herself in a comfortable old rocker near by. Delia, having assured herself that her young charges were in good hands, departed for the hotel to be there when Mrs. Quale returned. For half an hour the two girls remained as she had left them, each too much overcome to utter a single word.
So quiet was Virginie at last, that Patricia thought she must surely have fallen asleep, till she noticed two tears stealing down her cheeks.
"Why, darling, what is the trouble?" she questioned, laying her head down beside her.
"My father!" sobbed Virginie. "Do you think I have—have killed him?"
To divert her mind from this distressing subject, Patricia begged her to tell how she had managed to make her escape, and, in the recital, the Belgian girl forgot her fears for a while.
"But what was it that Melanie gave you?" questioned Patricia, and Virginie opened her hand and disclosed the crumpled scrap of paper that she had held clenched in it all this time. So absorbed had she been in other things that she had not till this moment noticed or thought of it. Together they smoothed it out and bent to read the sentences hastily scrawled on it in lead-pencil.
There is something I must tell you [it read in French] and I am cowardly enough not to wish to say it before your face, but I cannot let you go away forever without knowing it. Would I had told you before, but I did not dare. You have been kept in this bondage by the threat that your father would pay with his life if you dared to disobey them.
Have no fear. The threat is powerless. Your father died during the siege of Antwerp—a painless death. A shell struck and exploded near his villa, damaging it. He was not injured, apparently, at the time, but the shock evidently affected his heart, for he was found soon afterward lying peacefully in his chair—dead. You should rejoice that this is so, for he is happy and at peace, and he never could have been so again had he remained alive. May God have some happiness in store for you in the future.
Good-by for the last time,