“Hasn’t the child any relatives?” she asked. She seemed to be making an effort to speak calmly.
“I really can’t answer that,” said Baron. “She seems not to have. She has told me very little about herself, yet I believe she has told me all she knows. She has spoken of a young woman—an actress—she has travelled with. There doesn’t appear to have been any one else. I believe she never has had a home.”
Mrs. Thornburg withdrew her gaze from him. She concerned herself with the rings on her thin, white fingers. “How did you happen to be with her in the theatre?” she asked.
“I was in one of the upper boxes. I don’t know how she came to be there. I believe she couldn’t find a seat anywhere else.”
“And you’d never seen her before?”
“Never.”
There was an uncomfortable silence. Both Thornburg and Baron were looking interestedly at Mrs. Thornburg, who refused to lift her eyes. “I wonder how you happened to take her to your home?” she asked finally.
Baron laughed uneasily. “I’m wondering myself,” he said. “Nobody seems to approve of what I did. But if you could have seen her! She’s really quite wonderful. Very pretty, you know, and intelligent. But that isn’t it, after all. She is so charmingly frank. I think that’s it. It’s unusual in a child.”
“Yes, indeed,” agreed Mrs. Thornburg. “Unusual in any one, I should say.”
“Why, perhaps it is,” agreed Baron simply. He was not a little puzzled by something in Mrs. Thornburg’s manner.