Sarah walked swiftly along the passages, her head erect, her colour a little brighter, and her lips half-smiling instead of being curved in a contemptuous droop; and on her way she met Naomi.
'Oh miss!' cried Naomi, and then stopped short, and looked curiously at her young mistress.
'Well, Naomi, what is it? What are you looking at me like that for? Has anything more happened?' demanded Sarah.
'No, miss; thank goodness there's nothing more than you know, and that's enough, and too much. I was only thinking you look rare and beautiful this evening,' blurted out the maid.
'What nonsense, Naomi! I'm just hot and red, and you don't like pale people,' replied Sarah; but she was pleased all the same; for though she was not in the least vain of her good looks—which she would have exchanged willingly for Horatia's parentage—she liked to be admired, and she walked on, feeling very satisfied with herself.
Naomi looked after her admiringly. 'There's not a young lady can hold a candle to her in all the county. But wherever's she going? Why, that's not the way to the drawing-room; she's going to the master's room. Well, it isn't often she pays him a visit, and it mostly ends badly, if it doesn't begin so. How she comes to be his daughter I can't think; she's too good for the like of him. I'd sooner have believed she was a duke's daughter,' she soliloquised.
Meanwhile Sarah, conscious that she was doing a noble action in conquering her own feelings, walked on, as Naomi had said, to her father's special sitting-room, which he called his study, but in which his only study was how to make more money.
Sarah tapped at the door, and her father's voice growled something which she took to be an invitation to come in, so she opened the door and entered the room; but on the threshold she paused and hesitated. Her father was sitting in his big easy-chair in front of his bureau, writing. He did not look up at once, thinking it was a servant, who could wait his pleasure, and Sarah had time to notice his forbidding expression. It seemed to her that her father had never looked more unlovable, as he sat there with a scowl on his face, writing no doubt letters to the police or whatever authorities he wished to invoke aid from to punish the incendiaries; and as he wrote such a malignant and fierce expression came over his face that Sarah made a movement to retreat; but the noise she made in doing so attracted Mr Clay's attention, and, looking up sharply, he exclaimed, 'What! you, Sally?' and laid down his pen to hear what his daughter had to say to him.
'Yes, father; I came to tell you how sorry I am about all this affair to-day,' she said.
Mr Clay looked keenly and a little suspiciously at his daughter. She stood there, looking so like a culprit apologising for her misdeeds, that the thought flashed across him that perhaps she had something to be sorry for. She made no secret of her sympathy with the 'hands,' and she had not expressed sorrow or indignation at the time, so that the mill-owner may be excused if he believed for the moment that she had had something to do with the fire.