“Craig,” Alex. gasped, a light beginning to break upon him, “is she related to old Pledger?”
“To Joel Pledger? Yes. You saw her in the box with him, you know, and asked me who she was.”
“But you didn’t tell me her name. You said his grand-niece,” Alex. replied. “She interested me then. She has puzzled me ever since she came here. Why did she come?”
This question no one could answer, although Craig tried to do so.
“I think she is a little erratic by nature,” Craig said. “I know she is fond of adventure, and probably the fancy struck her, as it does many young girls, to have some diversion in this line. You must have seen she was a lady?”
“Always,” Alex. exclaimed. His interest in Sherry increased tenfold now that he knew she was the girl seen in old Pledger’s box and never forgotten.
Amy said nothing. She was thinking of the dress and the jewelry, and wondering how they were to approach the subject. Questioning Fanny Sheridan Sherman, daughter of a clergyman and friend of Craig Saltus, was different from questioning No. 1. Alex. too, was worried, but it must be done, and the sooner it was off his mind the better. Going to the piazza, where he had left Sherry, he found her still there, with her eyes closed and the traces of tears on her face.
“Miss Sherman,” he began, drawing a chair beside her, “I can’t tell you how surprised I am, and glad that—” he began to stammer, not knowing how to finish the sentence, for Sherry’s eyes were open now and fixed upon him. “Yes, I’m glad,” he went on, “and when you are feeling better you will tell me about it. Now I must speak of something else,—something imperative. Did you ever walk in your sleep?”
Instantly a look of terror leaped into Sherry’s eyes, and her hands grasped the arms of the chair in which she was sitting.
“Yes,” she answered, “when I was a child. I hoped I had outgrown the habit, but it came back to me some days ago and I took the key.”