Miss Fields looked down at her hands clasped together tightly in her lap. Finally she raised her head.
“No,” she said.
“I thought so,” Brent murmured. “You had better tell us about everything. All about what happened years ago——”
Miss Fields fixed her eyes on the opposite wall and started to speak. It was as if she had forgotten the young people to whom she was talking, merely repeating a story that had been lodged in her mind for years.
“Years ago I was secretary to a Doctor. He had a wife and a little girl. One day his wife was killed in a bad railroad accident. Before she died she made me promise to stay with Phyllis. The Doctor was heart-broken and partly to forget, partly to further his ambition, he decided to go to Europe to study surgery. He left his little girl with me and enough money to keep her until he should return and longer.”
“Didn’t he ever return?” Gale asked anxiously.
“I lived in his house with Phyllis for two years. Then one day I received a wire that he was returning. I thought of all sorts of things—that I might be discharged—I might never see Phyllis again. I was lonely—I had no family, and I had grown to love the little girl like my own daughter.” She looked sadly at Gale. “I brought Phyllis here. I’ve hidden her all these years——”
“Her father?” Gale asked.
Miss Fields bowed her head. “He returned to Europe after a few years—when he didn’t find us. I’ve always been afraid someone would discover who she was—that is why I didn’t want Phyllis to make friends—I was afraid. Now you know everything—what do you propose to do?”
Gale looked speechlessly at Brent. Her head was whirling with the new discovery. What a story had been here in their midst! Phyllis was the heroine of a story as incredible and fantastic as any fiction. What were they to do first?