“No, there is no one there but the family. There are no maids in the house.”
She stared at me curiously.
“Mademoiselle has gone? Are you cer—— Excuse me, Miss. But I thought she would never go. The children were like her own.”
“She is not there, Nora.”
She stood for a moment debating, I thought. Then she burst out:
“Mr. Reed made a mistake, miss. You can’t take a houseful of first-class servants and dismiss them the way he did, without half an hour to get out bag and baggage, without making talk. And there’s talk enough all through the neighborhood.”
“What sort of talk?”
“Different people say different things. They say Mademoiselle is still there, locked in her room on the third floor. There’s a light there sometimes, but nobody sees her. And other folks say Mr. Reed is crazy. And there is worse being said than that.”
But she refused to tell me any more—evidently concluded she had said too much and got away as quickly as she could, looking rather worried.
I was a trifle over my hour getting back, but nothing was said. To leave the clean and tidy street for the disordered house was not pleasant. But once in the children’s suite, with the goldfish in the aquarium darting like tongues of flame in the sunlight, with the tulips and hyacinths of the window-boxes glowing and the orderly toys on their white shelves, I felt comforted. After all, disorder and dust did not imply crime.