"The girl will sleep with me," she concluded tonelessly and turned to go.
"Which girl?" I queried dazedly.
"Her that brought the bairns," she replied and left me.
"Send her in here—I want to speak to her!" I shouted after Griselda. I could not face the thought of going out there. I was held to my chair by a sheer pitiful lack of courage to move into the dreadful gulf before me.
I closed my eyes and endeavored to still the tumult in my brain into silence. I wanted to think. But only those can achieve silence who do not need it. I could not. I opened my eyes.
A thin little girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen stood before me. This surely could not be the girl Griselda had referred to in charge of the children. She was herself a child. Were my disordered senses tricking me? I experienced the thrill Poe's hero must have felt at sight of the raven on the bust of Pallas.
"Who are you?" I whispered.
"I am Alicia, sir," she answered with large, frightened gray eyes fastened upon mine.
"What—what is it?" I stammered.
"The lady said you wanted to see me."