“No, he was always in the laboratory, and I might not go there.”
“Then you see, Rose, it must be mere fancy that you saw him, for you could not even know him by sight.”
“It was not fancy,” said Rose, gentle and timid as ever, but still obviously injured at the tone of reproof.
“My dear child,” said Colonel Keith, with some exertion of patience, “you must try to be reasonable. How can you possibly recognise a man that you tell me you never saw?”
“I said I never saw him in the house,” said Rose with a shudder; “but they said if ever I told they would give me to the lions in the Zoological Gardens.”
“Who said so?”
“He, Mr. Maddox and Maria,” she answered, in such trepidation that he could scarcely hear her.
“But you are old and wise enough now to know what a foolish and wicked threat that was, my dear.”
“Yes, I was a little girl then, and knew no better, and once I did tell a lie when mamma asked me, and now she is dead, and I can never tell her the truth.”
Colin dreaded a public outbreak of the sobs that heaved in the poor child’s throat, but she had self-control enough to restrain them till he had led her into his own library, where he let her weep out her repentance for the untruth, which, wrested from her by terror, had weighed so long on her conscience. He felt that he was sparing Ermine something by receiving the first tempest of tears, in the absolute terror and anguish of revealing the secret that had preyed on her with mysterious horror.