"Mrs. Googe?" she repeated, continuing to stare at him—blankly, as if she had heard but those two words of all that he was saying.
"Why, yes, Mrs. Googe. Is there anything so strange in that? She has always loved you, and she said to me, only the other day, 'I would love to have her young companionship in my house'—she will never call it home, you know, until her son returns—'to be as a daughter to me'—"
"Daughter!—I—want air—"
She swayed forward in speaking. Father Honoré sprang and caught her or she would have fallen. He placed her firmly against the chair back and opened the window. The keen night air charged with frost quickly revived her.
"You were sitting too near the fire; I should have remembered that you had come in from the cold," he said, delicately regarding her feelings; "let me get you a glass of water, Aileen."
She put out her hand with a gesture of dissent. She began to breathe freely. The room chilled rapidly. Father Honoré closed the window and took his stand on the hearth. Aileen raised her eyes to him. It seemed as if she lifted the swollen reddened lids with difficulty.
"Father Honoré," she said in a low voice, tense with suppressed feeling, "dear Father Honoré, the only father I have ever known, don't you know why I cannot go to Mrs. Googe's?—why I must not stay too long in Flamsted?"
And looking into those eyes, that were incapable of insincerity, that, in the present instance, attempted to veil nothing, the priest read all that of which, six years ago on that never to be forgotten November night in New York, he had had premonition.
"My daughter—is it because of Champney's prospective return within a year that you feel you cannot remain longer with us?"
Her quivering lips gave an almost inaudible assent.