"They're just coomin', sir," said the voice of his old housekeeper, as she threw open an inner door behind him, letting a glow of fire and candles stream out into the twilight. Helbeck meanwhile caught sight for an instant of a girl's pale face at the window of the approaching carriage—a face thrust forward eagerly, to gaze at the pele tower.
The horses stopped, and out sprang the girl.
"Wait a moment—let me help you, Augustina. How do you do, Mr. Helbeck?
Don't touch my dog, please—he doesn't like men. Fricka, be quiet!"
For the little black spitz she held in a chain had begun to growl and bark furiously at the first sight of Helbeck, to the evident anger of the old housekeeper, who looked at the dog sourly as she went forward to take some bags and rugs from her master. Helbeck, meanwhile, and the young girl helped another lady to alight. She came out slowly with the precautions of an invalid, and Helbeck gave her his arm.
At the top of the steps she turned and looked round her.
"Oh, Alan!" she said, "it is so long——"
Her lips trembled, and her head shook oddly. She was a short woman, with a thin plaintive face and a nervous jerk of the head, always very marked at a moment of agitation. As he noticed it, Helbeck felt times long past rush back upon him. He laid his hand over hers, and tried to say something; but his shyness oppressed him. When he had led her into the broad hall, with its firelight and stuccoed roof, she said, turning round with the same bewildered air—
"You saw Laura? You have never seen her before!"
"Oh yes; we shook hands, Augustina," said a young voice. "Will Mr.
Helbeck please help me with these things?"
She was laden with shawls and packages, and Helbeck hastily went to her aid. In the emotion of bringing his sister back into the old house, which she had left fifteen years before, when he himself was a lad of two-and-twenty, he had forgotten her stepdaughter.