"I have asked her for an explanation. Meanwhile," Rupert added, "I want to arrange something for you. Mrs. Brenton has been extremely kind, but I feel sure you will not like to encroach on that kindness." He put some bank-notes on the table. "I have brought you twenty pounds," he said; "with that I dare say you can manage for a little while, and I know of a place where you can stop till we have heard satisfactorily from my mother."
"I don't think it matters very much what your mother writes," Caroline Graniger said shortly; "she may have explanations to give you, and I shall certainly require such explanations later, but I have determined to cut myself adrift from Mrs. Baynhurst for good and all." She paused an instant, and then, colouring vividly, she said, "I—I will borrow five pounds, Mr. Haverford, it will be quite enough, and I shall be very glad to stay at this place you speak of till I get some kind of work."
"I advise you to take the twenty pounds," said Haverford a little drily, "you may want to buy things. You can always repay me at some future date. This is the address of the lady who will be very glad to give you house room for a little while. She is a woman who does a great deal of work for me, and, as she is in contact with all kinds and conditions of people, she may be able to find you employment."
There was another pause, and then he addressed her rather abruptly.
"Has my mother never told you anything about yourself at all?"
She shook her head.
"And you have no recollection beyond the school where you lived?"
Again she shook her head, and then hurriedly she said—
"Sometimes a vague memory comes to me. If I shut my eyes I can imagine myself being carried in some one's arms, hearing a voice singing to me, and the sound of the sea in the near distance. It is none of it very clear, but I have always imagined that I must have been on board a ship at some time when I was a tiny child, because I recollect seeing the dark sky with stars in it, and then some ropes and a tall, straight piece of wood like a tree, that I know now must have been a mast. I am rather fond of that old memory," Caroline Graniger said. She spoke dreamily, as if to herself.
He looked at her sharply, and he pitied her.