Again there was an interval of silence. It was six o’clock; the sun was going down over the sea beyond the West Pier, and the lawn, and the fashionable garden where the gay world congregates; and this eastern end of the long white seafront was lapsing into grayness, through which a star shone dimly here and there. It looked a cold, dull world after the pink hotel and the green shutters, the dusty palms and the turquoise sea of the Promenade des Anglais; but Mildred was glad to be in England, glad to be so much nearer him whose life companion she could never be again.
Franz brought her some tea presently, and informed her that her rooms were ready, and that Louisa had arrived with the luggage. Albrecht had left his humble duty for his honoured mistress, and was gone.
“When your father died, you looked through his papers and letters, no doubt?” said Miss Fausset presently, after a pause in the conversation.
“Yes, aunt, I looked through my dear father’s letters, and arranged everything with our old family solicitor, Mr. Cresswell,” answered Mildred, surprised at a question which seemed to have no bearing upon anything that had gone before.
“And you found no documents relating to—that unhappy girl?”
“Not a line—not a word. But I had not expected to find anything. The history of her birth was the one dark secret of my father’s life—he would naturally leave no trace of the story.”
“Naturally, if he were wiser than most people. But I have observed that men of business have a passion for preserving documents, even when they are worthless. People keep compromising papers with the idea of destroying them on their death-beds, or when they feel the end is near; and then death comes without warning, and the papers remain. Your father’s end was somewhat sudden.”
“Sadly sudden. When he left Enderby in the autumn he was in excellent health. The shooting had been better than usual that year, and I think he had enjoyed it as much as the youngest of our party. And then he went back to London, and the London fogs—caught cold, neglected himself, and we were summoned to Parchment Street to find him dying of inflammation of the lungs. It was terrible—such a brief farewell, such an irreparable loss.”
“I was not sent for,” said Miss Fausset severely. “And yet I loved your father dearly.”
“It was wrong, aunt; but we hoped against hope almost to the last. It was only within a few hours of the end that we knew the case was hopeless, and to summon you would have been to give him the idea that he was dying. George and I pretended that our going to him was accidental. We were so fearful of alarming him.”