“I believe it is Mrs. Wigglesworth herself,” declared Aunt Rebecca. “Bertie, I’m going into the other room; she will talk more freely to you. She would want to spare my nerves. That is the nuisance of being old. Now open the door.”
She was half-way across the threshold before she finished, and the colonel’s fingers on the door-knob waited only for the closing of her door to turn to admit the lady in waiting.
A lady she was beyond doubt, and any one who had traveled would have been sure that she was a lady from Massachusetts. She wore that little close bonnet which certain elderly Boston gentlewomen can neither be driven nor allured to abandon; her rich and quiet black silken gown might have been made any year within the last five, and her furs would have graced a princess. She had beautiful gray hair and a soft complexion and wore glasses. Equally evident to the observer was the fact of her suppressed agitation.
She waved aside the colonel’s proffered chair, introducing herself in a musical, almost tremulous voice with the crisp enunciation of her section of the country. “I am Mrs. Wigglesworth; I understand, Colonel Winter—you?—y-yes, no, thank you, I will not sit. I—I understood Mrs. Winter—ah, your aunt, is an elderly woman.”
“This is my sister-in-law, Mrs. Melville Winter,” explained the colonel. “My aunt is elderly in years, but in nothing else.”
Mrs. Wigglesworth smiled a faint smile; the colonel could see a tremble of the hand that was unconsciously drawing her fur collar more tightly about her throat. “How very nice—yes, to be sure,” she faltered. “But you will understand that I did not wish to alarm her. I heard that you wanted to speak to me, and that the little boy was lost.”
“Or stolen,” Mrs. Melville said crisply.
The colonel, in a few words, displayed the situation. He had prevailed upon his visitor to sit down, and while he spoke he noticed that her hands held each other tightly, although she appeared perfectly composed and did not interrupt. She answered his questions directly and quietly. She had been away taking tea with a friend; she had remained to dine. Her maid had gone out earlier to spend the day and night with a sister in the city; so the room was empty between six and seven o’clock.
“The chambermaid wasn’t there, then?”
“I don’t think so. She usually does the room and brings the towels for the bath in the morning. But I asked her, to make sure, and she says that she was not there since morning. She seems a good girl; I think she didn’t—but I have found something. At least I am af—I may have found something. I thought I might see Mrs. Winter’s niece about it”—she glanced toward Millicent, who said, “Certainly,” at a venture; and looked frightened.