He went upstairs softly, pursing out his lips as he went along in troubled thought. He opened the door of his daughter's room, and spoke her name in a whisper. There was not a sound.
"Fast asleep," he said, with a sigh, as he went to his dressing-room to dress for dinner. That was something he would not have omitted for any possible calamity that could befall him.
He ate his dinner in lonely state. Bridget had done her best by way of expressing her sympathy, but he ate without his usual enjoyment.
"Sure," said Pat afterwards, "he didn't know but what it was sawdust he was atin' instead of that beautiful volly-vong of yours. He could barely touch the mutton, and a beautiful little joint it was. Sure, there's a sad change come over the house, anyway."
The General gave orders that Miss Nelly was not to be disturbed again that night. After dinner he retired to his den and made a pretence of reading the papers, but his heart wasn't in it. He missed even a speech of Robin's which would have enraged him in happier times. He sat turning over the sheets and sighing to himself now and again; only when Pat came in with a pretence of replenishing the fire—it was Pat's way of showing his silent sympathy—was the General absorbed in his newspaper. Not that it imposed on Pat, who mentioned afterwards to Bridget that he didn't believe the master knew a word of what he was looking at.
About half-past nine the General relinquished that pretence of reading. He felt the house to be nearly as sad as though someone were lying dead in it, and he could support it no longer. He must find out what was the matter with the child, or at least show her how her old father's heart bled for her. He got up quietly from his big easy-chair, from which he had been used to survey his Nelly's face at the other side of the fireplace for many a happy year. To be sure, it had not been the same since the Dowager had come, and Nelly had gone gadding of evenings. Still, she had always come in to kiss him before she went off, looking radiant and sweet, with the hood of her evening cloak over her bright head and framing the dearest face in the world. She had always clung to him with her soft arms about his neck, and he had not minded her absence since she was enjoying herself as she ought at her age.
He climbed up the stairs of the high house. Nelly had chosen a bedroom right at the top, whence she could look away over the London roofs to the mists that hid the country.
The blinds were up and the cold winter moon lay on the girl's bed. The General came in tip-toe, trying to avoid creaking on the bare boards, which Nelly preferred to carpets. But his precaution was unnecessary. She was lying wide-awake. The darkness of her eyes in her face, unnaturally white from the moonlight, frightened him. He had a memory of Nelly's mother as he had seen her newly-dead, and the memory scared him.
"Is that you, papa?" Nelly asked, half-lifting herself on her pillow. "Come and sit down. I was thinking of dressing myself and coming down to you."
"You mustn't do that if your headache is not better."