Noel took her hands in both his own, and she clung to them with a pitiful intensity.
“The worst is over,” he said gently. “You have only to let me manage and think for you now—”
“Tell me,” she said, “tell me all there is to know—how you found this thing out, and what will be done about it. You must tell it every word to me. I can bear it better now than ever to speak of it again.”
And Noel told her, as mercifully and gently as he could, all that he had learned from the lawyer’s statements. He wanted to show her how convincing and certain the proof was, that she might be justified in acting on it. She held his hands in a hard grasp and looked at him with excited, distended eyes as she listened to it all. The mixture of wildness and calm in her manner and looks positively terrified him. He feared her reason might be temporarily disturbed, and would have given worlds to see her cry and complain, but she heard him through with the same excited stillness.
“I have a safe and pleasant refuge for you for the present, Christine,” he said. “I have arranged everything. A lady—a dear friend of mine, whose son was my friend and a man I loved devotedly—this lady will take you and care for you as a daughter. I have told her everything and she is waiting for you now, longing to love and comfort you. Her son is dead and she has often told me that I, as his friend, came next in her affections, and that she would do anything on earth to serve me. I was able to help him once and she never forgot it. So I went and told her all the truth. She has a mind as clean and simple as your own, Christine, and she is longing to love and comfort and take care of you. You will let me take you to her—will you not?”
“Oh, yes,” she said. “God bless you for it. I could never go back there again,” she added with a shudder, “but I must write a letter.”
She rose hastily and Noel, wondering, brought her writing materials.
She wrote a hasty note, and sealing it, asked him to have it sent at once. To his surprise he found it was addressed to Dallas.
“I will give it to the janitor as we go down,” he said. “Do you feel able to go now, Christine? A carriage will be waiting for us and I will take you to that dear woman who will make you feel as if your mother’s arms were around you.”