As Gabrielle stood there, her weary heart and mind whirled hither and thither by a hundred conflicting thoughts, in a very storm of pity and pain, the island lights suddenly pricked through the dove-gray of the gloom and flashed their pinkish radiance against the gaining and prevailing shadows. The girl’s thoughts travelled to them idly—she thought of little ships cutting their way through the trackless waters, and dark-faced, rough men twisting the spokes of the little wheels and peering out across the waves to find that steadily pulsating flash.
Somebody had lighted a light in the room behind her; she saw her own reflection, slender, aureoled, against the dark night. David touched her arm.
A sudden bitter need of tears possessed her, and her breast swelled. But she only raised heavy eyes to his questioningly, and bit her lip to steady it.
“Aunt Flora wants to speak to you, Gay.” The girl could tell by David’s tone that he had said it before. He gently turned her toward the bed.
She looked bewilderedly at Tom, who was busy at the lamp, and at Sylvia, who stood at the foot of the bed. Like a person in a dream she went slowly toward Flora, and knelt down beside her.
Flora reached out hard and anxious fingers and gripped the girl’s hand.
“I told David this yesterday—he told you and Tom—he was to tell you—when the fire came——” Flora whispered.
“He did tell us.” Gabrielle’s beautiful voice sounded childish and husky in contrast to the other weak voice. “But I thought—I thought that—my mother—Lily was still my mother, and that Uncle Roger was my father—that I had no right to call him father. It seems”—her lips shook again—“it seems that I might have had—a father——” she faltered. Her voice thickened and stopped. She raised her eyes appealingly, almost apologetically to David, who was watching closely. “I never—had—any one,” she said, with suddenly brimming eyes.
Flora spoke, and immediately afterward, in a strange muse that was not hearing, Gabrielle heard Sylvia give a sort of cry, and then David leaned over her and said tenderly:
“Gay—she is very ill, dear. If you can——?”