"Thank you—and mine is Jack Tyrrel. But I was wondering—naturally, too, as you must admit—how it happens that you are here, living in such a place."
"I will tell you; it will help pass away the time, and any thing is better than silence. Such terrible fears come over me at times, that I often wonder if I am not going mad—but I must not think of that. Do you know, sir, that until now, for over a year, I have not looked upon a human face, excepting father's?"
Jack squeezed her hand sympathetically. Lucy shrunk back as if alarmed, but then, blushing deeply, she hastily added:
"Well, I will tell you my story. It is a strange one, and often I half-wonder if I am not dreaming—if all the black, horrible past is not a dream, from which I shall awake some bright day.
"As I said, my name is Lucy—Lucy Bradford, and the man who brought you here is my father. He was not always thus—his madness dates back to a year or more ago.
"Father was ever peculiar, and after mother's death—which occurred when I was quite a child—he became still more so, and I can now understand the covert hints and strange bits of talk that used to puzzle me, passing between the neighbors. They believed he was gradually losing his mind.
"It was a queer but very pleasant life that I led, as I began to understand things that I saw around me. Father was an actor—as I believed then, the prince of actors—but the plain, almost miserable style in which we were forced to exist, should have showed me better. It was one constant, unceasing struggle for bread, and yet we were very happy.
"Father loved his art, and was only fully happy when 'treading the boards.' And he was sure of an appreciative house, behind the scenes, for I would applaud until my poor hands were nearly blistered. I half-fear that it was this that made father love me so dearly.
"I attended each rehearsal with him, and was never absent from my post in the flies when he was on the stage. This became such a matter of course that no attention was paid me by the other actors.
"Well, times changed. Father became so 'queer'—that is what the stage-manager called it—that he could not be depended upon. More than once I remember his marring the effect of a play by forgetting himself, and delivering the 'mad speech' of King Lear. He was discharged, and could not get another situation.