“It is I,” said Freda hoarsely, but boldly. “I have come to see my father. And I will see him too. If you don’t let me, I shall believe you have killed him.”
She almost shrieked these last words in her excitement. But the intruder, in whom she recognised the man she knew as Crispin Bean, took her hand very gently and led her out of the room.
CHAPTER IX.
Freda was so easily led by kindness that when, not heeding her passionate outburst, Crispin pushed her gently out of the room, she made no protest either by word or action. He left her alone on the landing while he went back to get a light, and when he rejoined her, it was with a smile of good-humoured tolerance on his rugged face.
“So you think I murdered your father, do you, eh?” he said, as he turned the key in the lock and then put it in his pocket.
“Why don’t you let me see him?” asked she, pleadingly.
“I have a good reason, you may be sure. I am not a woman, to act out of mere caprice. That’s enough for you. Go downstairs.”
Freda obeyed, carrying her crutch and helping herself down by the banisters.
“Why don’t you use your crutch?” called out Crispin, who was holding the lamp over the staircase head, and watching her closely. “If you can do without it now, I should think you could do without it always?”
He spoke in rather a jeering tone. At least Freda thought so, and she was up in arms in a moment. Turning, and leaning on the banisters, she looked up at him with a gleam of daring spirit in her red-brown eyes.