During her reading she had not noticed the chill which pervaded the room. Now she could see her breath as vapor against the still rays of the lamp. Creeping back to the couch for a rug she wrapped it around her and curled herself up on the crude parapet of logs running along the outer wall.
Was her father a prisoner somewhere in a strange land? Was he ill or—tears gathered in her burning eyes.
What did it mean? And she—without a friend or a relative in the world—without experience of the world! She recalled the girls at the convent, and how much more they seemed to know of life than she did; how astonished they had been on many occasions at her ignorance. They had dubbed her “Diana the Ingenuous.”
She was without clothes or money! How did people get these things? She stared into the gloomy recesses of the darkened room and shivered, oppressed, afraid. The Princess could neither help her nor clear up her doubts—the poor child knew less than she did herself. Was ever anyone so forlorn, so abandoned?
Then her pride and her natural energy came to her assistance. She must think—and she could not think in this prisonlike room. She would go out, and breathe the night air, and pray—pray for enlightenment. “Oh, father,” she sobbed, “why do you not come for me?”
With her rug about her she crept to the door and, cautiously opening it, peered into the darkness of the adjoining space. Not a sound was to be heard. She closed the door behind her and moved swiftly towards the exit leading into the open and stepped out onto the porch.
There was light enough by which to distinguish the outlines of beams and eaves against the bit of sky visible above the tops of the tall trees. In the deep shadow of the porch her eyes, now accustomed to the doubtful light, made out the shapes of the bench and the packages with which it was loaded. She hoped no one would find her there. It was very cold, but she wrapped herself in the rug, glad of its protection.
Through the firs came the sound of the rushing waters of the stream in the gully; she could see the stars and a faintly brighter spot in the heavens toward the east. Leaning against the roughly hewn pillar in an attempt to rest, she now began to regret her childish flight from the room.
“Hello!” came in suppressed, but very peremptory tones, “who is there?”
The ever-watchful Morton stepped from the offing towards the gully.