"Alicia!" I cried out in what sounded even in my own ears like a sob.
"Oh, Uncle Ranny!" She jumped from her chair with a little scream, and, before I knew it, I was pressing her to my heart with a quivering convulsive joy that choked all utterance.
She gasped in pain, the poor child. But when my arms relaxed, she lay sobbing happily against my heart.
Randolph was so scandalized that he sullenly turned his back upon us. Andrews was watching us with discreet and sober interest.
"My dearest child!" I whispered, still in a sort of trance of ecstasy, and Alicia, with the tears trickling down her face, murmured softly.
"Oh, how glad I am I'm found! And there's Randolph," she added with a happy laugh.
Her last words suddenly woke me out of my trance. I loosed my arms and stood for an instant baffled, uncertain, shamefaced.
"What are you doing here?" I then brusquely demanded with stupid severity to conceal the turbulent emotions within me.
"I—oh, didn't you get my letter?" she faltered. "I tried to explain—I had nowhere to go—" her lips were quivering—"he told me what a burden I was—I seemed to be only making a lot of trouble—and I had nowhere to go," she wept.
"He? Who? Andrews?" I demanded harshly.