"Oh, Connie, it is she!"
But the daughter, clasping her mother to her breast, said quietly:
"Dad, she has come home, and she may be dying. We must take her in."
He made no direct answer. What could he say? The girl's fearless words admitted of neither "Yes" nor "No."
He turned to the policeman.
"I am much obliged to you, Jenkins," he said; "we know the lady. Unless—unless there are serious consequences, will you oblige me by saying nothing about her? But stay. When you pass the Mount's Bay Hotel, please call and say that Mrs. Vansittart has been seized with sudden illness and is being cared for at my house."
"Yes, sir," said the sergeant, saluting.
As he walked away down the garden path he wondered who Mrs. Vansittart could be, and why Miss Brand said she had "come home."
Then he glanced back at the house, into which the others had vanished. He laughed.
"Just fancy it," he said; "I treated him as if he was a bloomin' lord. And I suppose my position is a better one than his. Anyhow he is a splendid chap. I'm glad now I did it, for his sake and the sake of those two girls. How nicely they were dressed. It has always been a puzzle to me how they can afford to live in that style on the pay of a lighthouse-keeper. Well, it's none of my business."