“Tom! He was with John and the girls, saving what they could, until it was too late. But he’s here now. Tom!” David said, raising his voice. And immediately Tom, who had been with the group of maids in the doorway, watching the fire, turned and came toward them.
He was grimed and sooty, his black hair tossed about wildly, and he had a great overcoat on. Gabrielle saw the look on his handsome face, half desperate, half shamed, all questioning, and as he knelt before her, with a sudden impulse she opened her arms and laid her wet face against his own.
Tom tightened his own arms convulsedly about her, and for a long minute they clung together.
“Is it all right?” Gabrielle whispered. And Tom, gently putting the silky tangled web of her dishevelled hair back from her earnest face, answered:
“We got you out, huh?”
“Tom,” she said, clinging to him, and looking into his face anxiously, “I’m so glad! I have never had anybody—of my own——”
“Are you?” he said, awkwardly, yet pleased, in a low, gruff tone, as she stopped. “You’ve got a brother now, huh?” he added, with a sort of clumsy lightness.
For answer, still resting her pale and soot-streaked cheek against his own, she tightened her arm about his neck, and he felt her breast move on a deep sigh, half of weariness, half of content.
And David saw his half-brother very reverently, very gently, kiss her upon her closed eyes.
“The wind’s straight out of the northwest,” Tom said then, in a significant tone to David, “the whole place is bound to go. Nice thing if we’d gotten ’em into John’s house, like you suggested!”