The polite servant looked as if he thought the girl was out of her mind. After a blank stare into her lovely, eager face, he said, surprisedly:
"Mr. Lyle—why, ma'am—he's dead, you know!"
If the man had struck her the cruelest blow in the face she could not have recoiled more suddenly. She stepped backward so quickly, and with such a wild, low cry of pain that she would have fallen down the steps if the man had not thrown out his arm and caught her.
"Oh, ma'am, don't take it hard," he said, in a voice of respectful sympathy. "Was he any relation of yours?"
She turned her beautiful face toward him with the whiteness of death upon it.
"When did he die?" she asked, unheeding his question.
"The same night that his daughter died—you've heard of that, ma'am, have you?" asked the man, who seemed rather of a gossiping turn.
"Yes, I've heard of that," she said, in a hollow voice totally unlike her own.
"Well, Mr. Lyle, he died that same night of a broken heart, folk said. She was his youngest daughter, and his favorite. They were both buried the same day."
"Dead, dead!" she murmured.