Tims smiled sardonically; but regaining her sense of the situation, out of which she had been momentarily shocked, applied herself to the problem of calling back poor Milly's wandering mind.
"Sit down, my girl," she said, abruptly, putting her arm around Milly's body, so soft and slender in the scanty folds of the blue dressing-gown. Milly obeyed precipitately. Then drawing a small chair close to her, Tims said in gentle tones which could hardly have been recognized as hers:
"M., darling, do you know where you are?"
Milly turned on her a face from which the unnatural vivacity had fallen like a mask; the appealing face of a poor lost child.
"Am I—am I—in a maison de santé?" she asked tremulously, fixing her blue eyes on Tims, full of piteous anxiety.
"A lunatic asylum? Certainly not," replied Tims. "Now don't begin crying again, old girl. That's how the trouble began."
"Was it?" asked Milly, dreamily. "I thought it was—" she paused, frowning before her in the air, as though trying to pursue with her bodily vision some recollection which had flickered across her consciousness only to disappear.
"Well, never mind that now," said Tims, hastily; "get your bearings right first. You're in Ascham College."
"A College!" repeated Milly vaguely, but in a moment her face brightened, "I know. A place of learning where they have professors and things. Are you a professor?"
"No, I'm a student. So are you."