Ellen opened the letter and read it through with apparent awkwardness and difficulty.
“Why, Miss Moira, where did you get this? It’s been lost for years. I didn’t know it was in existence.”
“I found it in a book upstairs.”
“My land! How did it get there, I wonder?”
“It was an old volume of Hugo’s—‘Les Misérables.’”
The girl winced a little as Ellen repeated the name after her and mispronounced it schoolboy fashion.
“Oh, yes, yes, I remember. That’s so many years ago. To think this letter has been there all that time!”
“I didn’t know you had ever had a baby, Ellen. Tell me about it. Are you too sleepy?”
“No, I’m not sleepy, Miss Moira—” Ellen’s politeness prompted the words, yet the girl caught a hint that she would have liked to end the conversation. “You—you startled me so,” she went on. “But—there isn’t anything to tell.”
“Did she die?”