Bare-headed, slender in soft-falling white, she stood in the library door with both hands behind her, clasping her big, limp hat by its flaring brim. Her lightly poised, blond head was fluffy with small, escaping curls, her clear-coloured cheeks were warmly flushed, and between her red, slightly parted lips her breath came too quickly, but softly, still. A sheer, torn ruffle trailed from her skirt. One rose-coloured bow hung from her girdle awry and crushed, and looked the softer for that, like a crumpled flower.
About her dress and her whole small self there was a drooping and crumpled look. It was the look of a child that has played too hard. Surely the most incongruous and pathetic little figure that had ever appeared from a room where a distressed or designing lady was suspected of hiding, she stood and returned Neil's look, but there was blank panic in her eyes.
They turned from Neil to Mr. Brady, wild eyed and pale beside him, to the disordered room, and back to Neil again, with no change of expression at all. They were wide and dilated and dark, intent still on some picture that they held and could not let go. Judith came an uncertain step or two forward into the room, stiffly, as if she were walking in her sleep, and stood still.
"Neil, what did you come here for?" she said. "I'm glad you came."
Her voice was sweet and expressionless, like her eyes, and though she had called Neil by name, she looked at him as if she had never seen him before. One small hand reached out uncertainly, pulled at his sleeve, and then, as he made no move to take it, dropped again, and began to finger the big hat that she held, and pluck at the flowers on it, but her eyes did not leave his face.
"Will they stand for this?" Mr. Brady was demanding incoherently behind them, "as young as this? Will the town stand it? No. And they won't blame me now. They can't. It was coming to you—you——"
He was in the grip of his own troubles again, and breaking into little mutterings of hysterical speech, which he now addressed directly to Colonel Everard, standing over him and not seeming to feel the need of an answer. It was an uncanny proceeding. The girl and boy did not watch it. They were seeing only each other.
"Judith," Neil began stumblingly, "what were you doing there? What's frightened you so? What you heard out here? That's all that frightened you, isn't it? Isn't it? But what made you come here alone like this? Didn't you know—— Oh, Judith——"
He stopped and looked down at her, saying nothing, but his eyes were troubled and dark with questions that he did not dare to ask. There was no answer to them in Judith's eyes, only blank fear. As Neil looked, the fear in Judith's eyes was reflected in his, creeping into them and taking possession there.
"Oh, Judith," he whispered miserably. "Oh, Judith."