“See that, now! Maybe you didn’t even know him?”
“I used to know him—never as a friend, even, for I could never have had the slightest confidence in his honor or honesty.”
“See that, now!”
A clock not far off struck twelve.
“Well, Miss Fronde, I won’t keep you up. Good-night,” said the janitress.
“Good-night,” replied Roma, and the elder woman left the room.
“Then that man did know that Owlet was his own child,” she said. “No doubt, hearing of my attachment to the little one, he came down to Goblin Hall especially to make a bargain with me to the effect that if I wished to keep my pet I must take him, too. But as I absolutely refused to admit him, he watched his opportunity, abducted the child, and wrote to me cautiously from a distance. It is a wonder he did not take her by a legal process. But, ah! I see. To do that he would have been obliged to confess his marriage with the ballet girl, and he knew that he could safely abduct her and that I could do nothing. Oh, my poor little Owl! Dr. Shaw may say what he pleases, but I know that dandy devil, William Hanson, is quite capable—not of killing the child, for he is too much afraid of the penalty, but of doing worse by her—of losing her, or throwing her away, as soon as he finds that he cannot use her as a bait for me. Poor little Owl!” Roma said to herself with a profound sigh.
Presently she arose and went into her comfortable bedroom, undressed, and went to bed.
Her sixteen hours of continuous railway riding, which might have fatigued a less robust woman “half to death,” only prepared her to enjoy a luxurious repose; and so, notwithstanding her uneasiness on little Owlet’s account, she soon fell into a profound sleep that lasted until late in the morning.
She awoke at last from such a state of deep unconsciousness that, on opening her eyes, she was surprised to find herself in a strange, modern, elegantly furnished chamber, instead of her old-fashioned bedroom at Goblin Hall.