"Well, somebody sent her some money yesterday, I think," replied Pansy. "She went this morning and bought herself a winter coat at Baxter's sale. She said it was an economy."
"And when the winter comes, she'll say it's out of date," replied Virgie with a little groan. "Oh dear, I do wish she wouldn't do things like that—with poor Tony's suit almost in rags."
"Well, you know it is no use for me to say anything, don't you, dear?" remarked Pansy, with the quaintest assumption of wisdom.
She would have been a pretty child but for her look of transparent, egg-shell frailness. Her hair, with bronze lights in it, clustered charmingly about her small face, and her eyes were as lovely as Virginia's own, but with the haggard, hungry expression of a child who has no health.
She was very small for her age, which was twelve. Her lameness was the result of a bad accident in babyhood. Mr. and Mrs. Mynors spent a winter on the Riviera, leaving their children in charge of a nurse who was not trustworthy. Mrs. Mynors had been warned that the nurse was flighty, but had taken no notice of the caution. She wished to set out on a certain date, and said she had no time to make other arrangements. The woman went out for what is now known as a "joy-ride" with the chauffeur and other chosen companions. She took with her Pansy, who was the baby, and Bernard, the elder boy, who was her favourite, leaving Tony at home in charge of Virginia. The party refreshed itself at many taverns on the way, and it was hardly surprising that the affair ended in a serious accident. Bernard was killed, and the baby's spine was injured.
The shock of his eldest son's loss was thought to have been the source of Mr. Mynors' own lingering illness. He had forgiven his wife many a flirtation, much consistent neglect of himself. He never forgave her for Bernard's death.
Nine-year-old Virginia waited, all that terrible day, and part of the night, for the return of the motoring party. Old Brand, the butler, who had been with the Mynors from the time of her father's boyhood, and who had begged his mistress not to leave this nurse in charge of the children, sat hour after hour with Virginia on his lap, until, at ten o'clock, he carried her up to bed, left her in charge of the under-nurse, and himself went out with one or two gardeners to see if he could hear news of the motor-party.
Virginia, though in bed, could not sleep. She lay listening, listening for a sound in the silent house, until the dawn began to break. Then she heard wheels—wheels and voices on the gravel of the drive; and, slipping from her bed, without arousing the fast-sleeping nursemaid or Tony, she ran downstairs in her white nightie.
All her life she would remember Brand's face as he strode into the hall and laid down upon a settle the burden that he carried—Bernard, with his head all shrouded in white linen. Then came a doctor, stern and tight-lipped, with the moaning baby in his arms. Virginia could still recall the carbolic smell of the doctor's clothes as he went upstairs, the blueness of the baby's face in its waxen stillness, and the silence punctuated by faint moans.
The grim realities of life came then to the girl's consciousness for the first time, never to leave her more. For some years—until she went to the school at which she met Miriam Rosenberg—she was grave and silent with a gravity unbefitting her years, her fine health, her promising future. After that she yielded to the spell of youth and friendship and adventure, and the world had seemed ever more alluring, until the final shock of her father's loss.