Bab looked at him hesitantly. It was this that she had dreaded.
"What shall I tell you?" she asked.
Beeston's eyes still were on the ceiling.
"Dead, isn't he?" he demanded.
Yes, he was dead, as the man lying there long must have known; and her trouble growing, Bab stared silently at him. But the grim eyes gave no sign.
"You don't look like him!" said her grandfather suddenly, so abruptly that she started. "You must look like that woman, eh!"
Bab gazed at him steadily.
"You mean my mother, don't you?" she inquired. She had been prepared for this, and in her voice was a tone of quiet decisiveness she meant him clearly to see. "You mustn't speak like that," she said clearly. "My mother did you no wrong!"
She saw his eyes leap from the ceiling to her and back again. Then a smile, a grim effigy of merriment, dawned in his somber face. A growl followed it.