"Poor child! poor child!" he murmured, dreamily, looking not at her, but at the gloaming outside.
"As long as I could, uncle, until I felt that I must run away, or go mad, or die. Then I remembered you, I had never seen you, but I remembered that you were papa's brother, and that, being of the same blood, you must be good, and kind, and true; and so I resolved to come to you."
His hand trembled on her head, but he was silent for a moment; then he said, in a low voice:
"Why did you not write?"
A smile crossed the girl's face.
"Because they would not permit us to write, excepting under their dictation."
He started, and a fiery light flashed from the gentle, dreamy eyes.
"No letters were allowed to leave the school unless the principals had read them. We were never out alone, or I would have posted a letter unknown to them. No, I could not write, or I would have done so, and—and—waited."
"You would not have waited long, my child," he murmured.
She threw back her head and kissed his hand. It was a strange gesture, more foreign than English, full of the impulsive gracefulness of the passionate South in which she had been born and bred; it moved the old man strangely, and he drew her still closer to him as he whispered—