Mattie ran up-stairs, quickly dressed herself, gave one frightened glance at her own face in the dressing-glass, and then hurried down-stairs away from the silence wherein she could not trust herself.
"I am going now," she said, and hurried away.
Mr. Gray was disturbed by Mattie's eagerness to depart, but explained it by the rules he considered most natural.
"She is unsettled by Sid's absence—by the danger he is in. Well, there's nothing remarkable in that."
He took his work into the shop and devoted himself to it, in the leisure that his customers—few and far between after nightfall—afforded him. When the shutters were up before the windows, and the gas turned low, he stood at the door waiting for Mattie, who was late, and speculating as to the advisability of proceeding in search of her.
Mattie came swiftly towards him whilst he watched. She had been trying to outwalk her thoughts, and failed—the odds were against her.
"Ah! that is you, Mattie!—how are they?"
"Well. I did not see Miss Wesden. She was not at home."
"All the time with that old man?" he said, with a little of his past weakness developing itself.
"We have been speaking of old times—and Harriet. Oh! dear! I am very tired. May I go up to my room at once?"