Then, before Mr. Haverford had time to speak, she went on eagerly—
"Above all things, I want to know something about myself. It is no new thing for me to feel lonely. I have always been one by myself. Perhaps I should have gone on accepting everything that came and asked no questions if this had not happened, but to-night I feel so ... so lost, so bewildered to know what to do: to understand...." She cleared her throat and looked pleadingly at Rupert Haverford. "As you belong to Mrs. Baynhurst, perhaps you can answer my questions, perhaps you can tell me why she took me away from the school where I have lived ever since I can remember, why I was told she had the right to take me away?"
Haverford had moved to the fireplace, and was standing there looking at her with contracted brows.
He listened with a sense of the greatest discomfort, and even uneasiness.
"Believe me," he said when he spoke, "if I could answer those questions I would do so most gladly, but I am an absolute stranger to all that passes in my mother's life. I know you were her secretary, but she has had a number of secretaries, and in this, as in other things, she acts for herself absolutely. She has never spoken to me about you." Here he paused. "If it is true that she called herself your guardian, this is a matter about which I know nothing. I am sorry," he finished abruptly. "Sit down," he said all at once, "you must be tired."
She had turned very white, and she sat down in the chair. For an instant her eyes closed, and in that spell of silence he saw how young she was, scarcely more than a child.
He was accustomed by this time to come in contact with all sorts of trouble, with the sordid misery of the very poor, the hopeless, pathetic endurance of those who have to keep a brave front to the world whilst they are literally starving. Sorrow was a well-worn study, and there was no mistake about the story written on that young, white face.
She opened her eyes almost directly.
"I—I beg that you will not let me detain you," she said in that sharp, proud way; then more proudly still she added, "I am sorry now that I came."
"On the contrary," said Rupert Haverford, "I am glad that you came. You did quite rightly. Though I have made it a principle never to mix in my mother's affairs, this appears to me to be a matter which requires investigation. As you have just said yourself, she acts with no conventional basis, doubtless she does not in the least grasp the meaning of your real position. You must permit me to charge myself with the care of you till we have communicated with Mrs. Baynhurst."