Mrs. Jenkins paused slightly in her occupation, and asked, 'Shall I leave the room?'
'Certainly not,' replied Helen. 'I have no secrets from you.'
'Pray do not go, Mrs. Jenkins,' said Thornton earnestly: he infinitely dreaded the effect of the news he had come to tell Helen Griswold, and eagerly caught at the chance of that efficient person's presence in. case she should be quite overcome by it. 'The fact is, my dear Helen,' he went on, glancing at Mrs. Jenkins, and by a stealthy gesture of his hand drawing her attention to what he was about to say, and her vigilance for Helen, 'an unexpected obstacle to our thorough investigation of Griswold's affairs has arisen. It comes, as you have divined so quickly, from Chicago.'
At the mention of the word Mrs. Jenkins started irrepressibly, came a step or two forward, holding some toilet article unconsciously in her hand, and in evident undisguised suspense upon Thornton Carey's words.
'The newspapers too,' he went on, 'contain intelligence of an accident upon the railway between New York and Chicago. We had no reason to suppose that Trenton Warren had left Chicago, or was either at New York or in the vicinity at any time within several weeks, but it may have been so, and his absence from Chicago would account otherwise than as you accounted for it, for his having returned no answer to our first telegram. Whatever may have been the cause, there is no doubt that he was in the train to which this serious accident occurred last night on his way from New York to Chicago. I regret to tell you that the accident was a very serious one, and that among the list of passengers killed is the name of Trenton Warren.
'This is another blow for you, my dear Helen,' he continued, as she sank back in her chair, and clasped her hands.
But at that instant Mrs. Jenkins sprang towards him with a piercing scream and crying out, 'No, no! for me--for me!' fell down senseless at Helen's feet.
[CHAPTER V.]
A CLUE.
It was Thornton Carey who darted forward, and kneeling by Mrs. Jenkins's prostrate form, endeavoured, in the helpless manner which all men employ under similar circumstances, to restore animation by raising her head and chafing her hands; for Helen, overcome by the suddenness of the nurse's attack, at first sat motionless in her chair. After a moment all her womanly readiness and sympathy returned to her, and having summoned Annette to her aid, they lifted Mrs. Jenkins on to an adjacent sofa and busied themselves in their work of restoration. Not that the French waiting-maid was of much use as an assistant; she seemed to think that the seizure of Mrs. Jenkins, on whose clear-headedness and promptness of action the whole household had been for the last few days reliant, was the climax to the family misfortune; and she wrung her hands and beat her breast and Mon Dieu'd in a manner which, under other circumstances, would have been extremely irritating. But Helen was busily engaged in gently bathing the sufferer's head with eau de Cologne, and paid no attention to the waiting-maid's lamentations; while Thornton Carey, who had a keen sense of delicacy, had retired to the window, where, while apparently gazing with great interest into the street, he was drumming with his fingers on the glass, and endeavouring to-arrive at an elucidation of the scene which had just passed before his eyes.