She arose languidly and administered water to Miss Browne, who was gasping alarmingly. 'This room is hot,' she said. 'Go and lie down in your own. You shouldn't have made me talk, if you didn't want to hear things. Mind that bit of loose wood at the door.'
Miss Browne, thus dismissed, went away like a chidden child, but her eyes were full of terror, and her very knees trembled. She groped her way to the sitting-room and poured out the frightful story into Mr. Cameron's ears.
He made his own way presently to the hot, cramped bedroom. Hermie had let her hair down, and was sitting on the edge of the bed surveying her poor little prettinesses tragically in the looking-glass.
Her father sat down on the bed beside her, and disclaimed fatigue and headache and everything else she urged upon him.
'What is this Miss Browne tells me, little one?' he said, and almost indulgently, so young, slight, and absurd she looked, to be questioning eternity.
Hermie twisted her wavy hair up into a hard plain knot.
'I only said I was an atheist,' she said, and her young lips quivered and her eyes grew wild.
He put his arm round her.
'How long have you been feeling like this, childie?'
She burst into a passion of frightened tears.