"Sit down," Sandy urged, placing chairs near the hearth and bending to lay on more wood, "there is much to say."
Then it was that the little doctor took command. She did not sit down as the others had; she stood by the table with some loose papers in her hand.
"I feel as if it were all my fault," she began. "Things lie so still here; we seem so shut in. Cynthia has been like a child to me—I haven't thought ahead and I just played with her and worked out—my puzzle piece by piece. It was only a week ago that I felt sure; I meant to tell Cynthia slowly and little by little—and then this happened!"
Marcia Lowe's face was fixed and white. No one spoke. Then she went on again.
"I have always believed Cynthia's father was—my uncle, Theodore Starr! I came to Lost Hollow because I believed that, but I had no absolute proof and Ann Walden denied me support. But look at her—look at Cynthia and me! Of course I am old, old, and she's a baby, but can't you read God's handwriting in our faces? See the colour, form—expression——"
Morley and Treadwell stared at the two faces and into their benumbed consciousness something vital struggled to life. It brought a gleam to Lans's eyes; a groan of surrender to Sandy's lips! The contrite voice was going on and on.
"There was no marriage certificate. There had been an unhappy engagement between my uncle and Ann Walden—he, poor, timid, gentle soul, dared not speak at the proper moment, he dreaded giving pain, and he married Cynthia's mother privately, and before things could be made plain—he died up in the hills, serving men! The man that married them went away—only a year ago he came back; recently Mr. Greeley drove over to Sudley's Gulch to make a will for this man; Cynthia and I went with him. The man died a few days ago. Among his papers was a notebook in which was recorded the marriage of Queenie Walden and Theodore Starr! The man was a—a magistrate, the thing was legal—Little Cyn is—my niece!"
An empty room never seems so still as one in which living, wordless men and women are held by breathless silence. Treadwell dared not speak. He seemed a stranger; one who had no right to be there. Cynthia's eyes were lifted to Sandy Morley's face and did not fall away. Having said what she had come to say, Marcia Lowe held out her written words of proof and waited. After a long pause Cynthia spoke and her voice was electrical in its effect.
"Sandy," she said, going close to him and holding him with her clear gaze and slow, brave smile, "you know I did not mean—to do wrong?"
"Yes, little Cyn."