The look she now turned upon him was one of mingled wonder and scorn.
“You are incomprehensible,” she said. “I am gratified to know that it was not my life nor my honor, but your own name, that you saved to-night,—it lessens my obligation. Being a woman, I am nothing; being a Warburton, disgrace must not touch me! So be it. If I may not confide in my husband, I will keep my own counsel still. And if I cannot master my trouble alone, then, perhaps, as a last resort, and for the sake of the Warburton honor, I will call upon you for aid.”
There was no time for a reply. While the last words were yet on her lips, the heavy curtains were thrust hastily aside and Winnie French, pallid and trembling, stood in the doorway.
“Leslie! Alan!” she cried, coming toward them with a sob in her throat, “we have lost little Daisy!”
“Lost her!”
Alan Warburton uttered the two words as one who does not comprehend their meaning. But Leslie stood transfixed, like one stunned, yet not startled, by an anticipated blow.
“We have hunted everywhere,” Winnie continued wildly. “She is not in the house, she is not—”
She catches her breath at the cry that breaks from Leslie’s lips, and for a moment those three, their festive garments in startling contrast with their woe-stricken faces, regard each other silently.
Then Leslie, overcome at last by the accumulating horrors of this terrible night, sways, gasps, and falls forward, pallid and senseless, at Alan Warburton’s feet.