Grace and Milly were far too much excited to notice it—but, as a matter of fact, this stately lady was excited too, and the look with which she perused them, their faces, their mourning dresses, their whole appearance, was unquestionably anxious—though this would have seemed to them incredible, impossible. It was only when they sat down that they perceived some one behind at the other end of the room—a man leaning over a writing-table with his head turned away from them. Miss Anna sat full in the light between the window and the fire. She repeated, with a faint tremour of impatience, “You asked for me?”
“No,” said Grace—she would have liked to say madame, or my lady, or something that would have shown her reverence; but was too shy, with all her self-possession, to venture out of the beaten way. She sat down timidly and folded her hands, and looked at her questioner with that wistful, propitiating look, a faint smile quivering about her lips, her eyes cast upwards with a shy but earnest appeal, which sits so prettily upon extreme youth. “No,” she said, “indeed we did not even know your name. We are very unfortunate girls in great trouble, and we found your address among papa’s papers.”
“Who is your papa?”
Grace saw nothing but the old lady who gazed at her fixedly and riveted her eyes; but Milly, who had no responsibility of speech, saw more than her sister. She saw the man at the writing-table turn hastily round at the sound of Grace’s voice, then rise and approach nearer. When he came into the light she recollected that it was he who had come to them at the hotel the day before.
“Ah,” said Grace, her mouth all quivering; “papa is——. We came over from Canada——” Here, even she, absorbed in her story and the emotion it occasioned, made an involuntary pause, seeing the lady start and look over her head as if at some one behind with a curious look of alarm and trouble. Was it only sympathy? Grace paused while you might count ten, and then went on again—“only a fortnight since; and on Monday he died, and left us all alone, all alone in this strange place. We thought—we imagined that it was you he went to see the first night he was in England——”
Here she stopped again; the lady’s mouth seemed to quiver too. “Many people come to see me,” she said. “What was his name?”
“His name was Robert Yorke. We are his daughters; I am Grace, and this is Milly—we are the two eldest,” said the girl, still with the same pathetic smile about her mouth, and a look which appealed unconsciously for help and pity.
Miss Anna eyed them all the time with eyes that seemed to pierce them through and through. “This is a very sad story,” she said. There was a quiver in her voice which meant real suffering, not mere pity; but her words were not so tender as this emotion might have indicated; there was no effusiveness of kindness in them. “You are left, then, without friends, without resources? I feel for you very much; but I have a great many applicants——”
Grace started to her feet, pressing her hands together almost with violence. “Oh!” she said, “If you think we are coming to you for charity——”
“Aunt Anna,” said the young man, coming forward, “these are the young ladies whom I saw yesterday; if they are so kind, in their own trouble, as to bring us some information, some clue——”