“I will tell you who wrote it; it was a man from South America, and his name is Berdenstein. He is at Naselton Hall. I will go to him. Perhaps he will tell me what you will not.”
The man stepped forward with outstretched hand. His face was dark with passionate anger, almost I thought he would have struck me. But the woman’s was pale as death, and a drop of red blood marked the place where her teeth met her under lip. Then I saw that the man had known, but the woman had not.
“If you know so much,” he said, brutally, “you had better go to him and discover the rest. You will find him very sympathetic. Without a doubt he will help you!”
“No! No!”
The woman’s negative rang out with a sudden sharp and crisp distinctness. She rose and came over to my side. She laid her hands softly upon my shoulders. Her face amazed me, it was so full of sympathy, and yet so sorrowful. She, too, had received a blow.
“Child,” she said, softly, “you must not be impatient. I believe that your father is well. I believe that somehow or other he will contrive to be here in time to take up his duties to-morrow. We could not tell you—either Mr. Deville or I—where he is, but we know perhaps a little more than you do. He is in London somewhere seeking for that person whom you have just mentioned. He will not find him, but he will not give up searching for him till the last moment. But, child, whatever you do, avoid that man Berdenstein like a pestilence. Your father and he are bitter and terrible enemies. Do not dream of going to him. Do not let your father know that he is near. If fate must have it so, they will meet. But God forbid!—but God forbid!”
“Who is he, then, this man, this Berdenstein?” I asked her under my breath. Her words had had a powerful effect upon me. She was terribly in earnest. I knew that she was speaking for my good. I trusted her. I could not help it.
She shook her head. Her eyes were full of horror.
“It is not for me to tell you, child. It is one of those things which God forbid that you may ever know.”
Then there was a silence between us. After all this mystery whose shadows seemed to surround me was like a far away thing. My present trouble weighed heaviest upon me. The other was vague, even though it was terrible. My father’s disappearance was a real and terrible calamity staring me in the face. It engrossed all my thoughts. They would tell me nothing, those two. I dared not go to Berdenstein. Already I was afraid of him. I remembered his smile when I spoke of my father, and I shuddered. Supposing they had met. Supposing they had come together face to face in some lonely house. Perhaps his letter had been a decoy. The man’s face, with its cruel mouth and sardonic smile, suddenly loomed large in my memory. I sprang to my feet with a cry of fear. I was terrified with my own thoughts. Bruce Deville came over to me, and I found him studying my face with a new expression, the meaning of which I could not fathom.