"Oh! no, no," Christina spoke breathlessly; "only I was so frightened, I didn't know what to do, when they said I was a thief, for I can't prove that I am not. I can't prove anything. I have only my bare word. Everybody who could help me is dead."
Feeling more and more mystified by every word she spoke, Fergusson rang the bell, and when Elizabeth promptly answered his summons, and stared in mute surprise at the dripping figure standing under the lamp, he said tersely:—
"Miss Moore has arrived unexpectedly, and she is very wet. Will you put her to bed with hot bottles, and give her something hot to drink? Don't let her talk to-night. I will come round and see her in the morning."
Perhaps Elizabeth, in the long years of her service with Margaret, had learnt to accustom herself to surprises, and she expressed no astonishment now; but a look of compassion for the drenched and exhausted girl crossed her kindly face; and, with a comprehending nod to the doctor, she took Christina's hand and led her upstairs, the girl going with her, as unresistingly as a little child might have done.
"Worn out, utterly worn out, and frightened to death," Fergusson commented inwardly; "now what can have happened to bring her here in this condition, and to make her say such extraordinary things about not being a thief. I must tell Mrs. Stanforth what liberties I have taken with her house, and come back as early as I can to-morrow." He ran lightly upstairs again to his patient's room, and told her of Christina's unlooked-for arrival, finding, to his relief, that she was in no wise startled or upset by what she heard.
"Poor little girl," was her soft comment; "we will take great care of her. Elizabeth loves having a young thing to mother; we will do our best for her, and perhaps in the morning she will be able to explain herself. It is difficult to imagine what can have happened; she seemed to be so happy in her work."
"It is impossible to suppose that Lady Cicely can have been unkind to her," Fergusson answered thoughtfully; "she could not be unkind to a living soul. However, speculation is a fruitless task; we must wait till Miss Moore can tell us her own story. I did not dare question her to-night, she was already completely overwrought."
And it was still a very wan and white Christina, who was taken the next morning into Margaret's room by Elizabeth; and Margaret's observant eyes saw at once that all the girl's nerves were on the stretch, that she was in a condition of acute tension. The wish to help this young thing in her hour of need, the sudden necessity for stretching out a succouring hand to another human being, acted as a trumpet call to Margaret's own strong character, and she looked more herself this morning, than she had done for many weeks.
"You poor child," she said to Christina, a motherly tenderness in her accents; "have you slept properly; and are you rested?"
"I woke rather often," the girl answered with a nervous glance about her. "I kept on starting up, and fancying they had come with the police."