"She is not here," he answered, "and the door is closed."
The sight of his face seemed to help her to recover herself.
"What am I saying?" she said. "I have not told you who I am."
"No," he replied, "not yet."
"My name was Janet Murdoch," she said. "I was your father's cousin. Once he was very fond of me."
She drew from under her pillow a few old letters.
"Look at them," she said; "he wrote them."
But he only glanced at the superscription and laid them down again.
"I did not know," she panted, "that he was dead. I hoped he would be here. I knew that he must have lived a quiet life. I always thought of him as living here in the old way."
"He was away from here for thirty years," said Murdoch. "He only came back to die."