"I am very sorry to intrude," said Mr. Hiram P. Jessop in his most courteous voice. "Could you inform me, Madam, if this is the house they call The Refuge?"
"That's right," said the woman with the hair. And I found myself suddenly wondering if she were the lady that those post-office girls had nicknamed "Autumn Tints."
It was most appropriate, with those reds and golds and bronzes of the hair that must have been sufficiently striking had it not been "treated" with henna, as it had.
So I said eagerly, and without further preamble: "Oh, then, could you tell me if Miss Million is here?"
"I couldn't, dear, really," said the woman, who looked all washed-out excepting her hair. "There is such a lot of them that keep coming and going here! Like a blessed beehive, isn't it? Bothered if I can keep track of all their names!"
She paused a moment before she went on.
"Miss Million—now which would she be?"
I felt a chill of despair creeping over my heart.
What did she mean by saying that "so many of them" kept coming and going in this place?
This, combined with the comments of those post-office girls at Lewes, awoke in my mind one terrifying conclusion. This place with the peaceful garden and the pretty name——! There was something uncanny about it.... This place was a lunatic asylum!