He was white, with livid lips, and his limbs trembled.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bram in a muffled voice.
“Claire, my daughter Claire!” stammered Theodore in a voice which sounded shrill with real feeling. All the jauntiness, all the vivacity, had gone out of him. He shivered with something which was keener than cold.
“Well?” said Bram, with a horrible chill at his heart.
“She’s—she’s gone, gone!” said Theodore, reeling back against the fence of the little garden. “She’s run away. She’s run right away. She’s left me, left her poor old father! Don’t you understand? She is gone, man, gone!”
And Mr. Biron, for once roused to genuine emotion, broke into sobs.
Bram stood like a stone.