His face had flushed as he spoke, and there was a tone of appeal in his voice; he could not before Gladys add what was on his lips: "You are not vexed with me?"
"You did quite right, my dear boy," said his aunt heartily. "Rosamond and I are cold and tired too. We should like a cup of tea also, and then these little friends of ours will tell us all they have to tell."
"I have seen them before," added Walter in a lower tone, going nearer his aunt under pretext of getting her a chair. "You remember the children on the Boulevards I told you about the other day? It is they."
But Gladys, who till then had stood still, gazing at the ladies without speaking, suddenly sprang forward and almost threw herself into "Auntie's" arms.
"Oh, thank you, thank you!" she exclaimed, bursting into tears. "I was just thinking perhaps you'd be vexed with him," she pointed to Walter, "and he's been so kind, and it is so nice here. Oh, we couldn't, we couldn't go back there!" and clasping her new friend still more closely she sobbed as if her overcharged heart would break.
Auntie and Rosamond soothed her with the kindest words they could find, and then Auntie, who always had her wits about her, reminded Gladys that they too were very anxious to have a cup of tea, would she help to pour it out? She evidently knew all about it, whereupon Gladys's sobs and tears stopped as if by magic, and she was again the motherly capable little girl they had seen her on entering the room.
Tea over—before thinking of taking off their bonnets—Auntie and Rosamond, and Walter too, made Gladys tell them all she had to tell. It was a little difficult to follow at first, for, like a child she mixed up names and events in rather a kaleidoscope fashion. But at last by dint of patience and encouragement and several "beginnings again at the beginning," they got a clear idea of the whole strange and yet simple story, all of which that was known to Gladys herself, you, my little readers, already know, except the history of the last miserable day in the Rue Verte, when Anna's temper had got the better of her prudence to such an extent as to make Gladys feel they could bear it no longer. She had struck them both in her passion that very morning when Françoise was at the market, and wild with fear, more for Roger than herself, Gladys had set off to ask help and advice from the only people she knew of in all great Paris who could understand her story.
"Except him," added Gladys, nodding at Walter, "but we didn't know where he lived. I couldn't write to Miss Susan, for I hadn't any paper or envelopes. I thought I'd wait till Mr. 'Dolph came home and that he'd let me write, but I don't know when he's coming, and I hadn't any money, and if she—oh! if she had struck Roger again it might have killed him. He's so little, you know," and Gladys shuddered.
There was silence for a few moments. Then Auntie turned to Walter.