"Perfectly simple, and a natural thing to do," observed Dr. Fairbairn dryly. "Well?"
"There were rooms which I couldn't get into—indeed they were no longer rooms; the fire had started there. But they were in the rear of the house, and I felt sure Miss Charlotte would not have been there. Indeed, the only possible explanation of her being in the house at all was that she had been smothered by the smoke, and had not wakened. This could only have happened in her bedroom, or on the way to the door, so I managed to get up-stairs——"
"Were they burning?" demanded Rob, leaning forward, her face pale, her hands tensely clasped.
"A little," said Bruce, smiling at her reassuringly. "Don't have a Looking-Glass Land scare, Rob; it's all over, and you see I did not perish on that burning stairway." Rob shuddered, and Prue dropped the cup she held; it fell in fragments to the floor.
"Hold on, Prudy! This story seems to be hard on the china," cried Bruce. "There isn't any use in dwelling on details, aside from the effect on tea-cups. 'Suffice it to say,' as I suppose Basil will say when he writes novels, I got into Miss Charlotte's room, and she wasn't there. Then the crowd began to shout at me to come out, and I took its advice. Not much too soon; the roof fell—" Bruce stopped short. He could not carry off his story with the lightness of touch with which he had begun it. The recollection of that crashing roof, falling just as his feet crossed the threshold, sickened him. Life seemed very precious as he recalled it, and the death he had so narrowly escaped unspeakably dreadful.
Bruce felt his audience tighten, as it were, under the strain of his own feeling and a sudden, full realization of their close reprieve from an unbearable tragedy.
He turned to smile into Basil's blanched face. "I lost my overcoat," he said quickly. "I had wrapped it around my head to keep off the heat and smoke. It was an unusually satisfactory coat."
"Where did you find Charlotte?" asked Dr. Fairbairn.
Bruce turned to him, grateful for being helped over and away from the remembrance of that frightful exit with the crash of the infalling roof in his ears.
"Some one said that Annie had been taken over to St. Chad's rectory," said Bruce. "But I heard people around me saying when I came out without Miss Charlotte and without having found any trace of her that she must have perished, or she would have gone with her maid. There was a moment as I heard them talking that my heart sank within me, remembering those rooms in the rear, burned out before I got there. And then, like an inspiration, there flashed upon me a picture of Miss Charlotte's favourite spot down by the river, and I started for it on the run. There she was, walking up and down, back and forth, her hands clasped straight in front of her, her head hanging, and a strange, bewildered look on her gentle face. Not a hair was harmed, but it was most pathetic."