Those sobs were heard through the thin partition in Ida’s room. They were very terrible to her. They broke down the remnant of her excuse that the child was an imposition. They woke all her woman’s tenderness, and the impulse to console carried her in a few moments to the door.
‘Uncle! Uncle Frank!’
‘I’m not ill,’ answered a broken, heaving, impatient voice. ‘I want nothing.’
‘Oh, let me in, dear uncle—I’ve something to tell you!’
‘Not now,’ came on the back of a sob. ‘Go!’
‘Oh, now, now!’ and she even opened the door a little. ‘He is not drowned! At least, Rose Rollstone thinks—’
‘What?’ and he threw the door wide open.
‘Rose Rollstone is sure she saw him with Louisa Hall in London that day,’ hurried out Ida, still bent
on screening herself. ‘She’s gone to Canada. It’s there that Herbert is gone to find him and bring him home!’
‘And why—why were we never told?’