"The police."
Stamer hurried through the wicket and was gone.
Timmons shut the door once more, and leaning his back against it plunged into a sea of troubled thoughts.
CHAPTER XXIV.
[GRACEDIEU, DERBYSHIRE.]
When Edith Grace came into the little sitting-room in Grimsby Street, the morning after her flight from Eltham House, she found her grandmother had not yet appeared. She went to Mrs. Grace's door and asked if she might bring the old woman her breakfast. To her question she received a blithe answer that Mrs. Grace would be ready in a minute. The girl came back to the room where the breakfast was laid and sat down to wait. The old woman always presided, and sat with her face to the window. She liked to see as much sunlight and cheerfulness as came into Grimsby Street. On the table were two plates, two cups, eggs, rashers, and a loaf of bread. By the side of Mrs. Grace's plate a letter. It was a frugal-looking breakfast for middle-class people, but much, more elegantly appointed than one would expect to find in a Grimsby Street lodging-house. The cutlery, linen, silver and china were bright and clean and excellent. There were no delicacies or luxuries on the table, but the adjuncts of the viands were such as no lady need take exception to.
Edith was dressed in a perfectly plain black gown, one she had got for her duties as companion. She had a trace of colour at the best of times. This morning she looked pale and listless. She had slept little during the night. She had lain awake, alternately reviewing the extraordinary events of the day before, and trying to discover some means by which in her future search of employment she might insure herself against repeating her recent experience.
Up to this she knew little or nothing of the world. Her father, a barrister, had died when she was young. Her mother had been dead since her childhood. She had spent seven years at a boarding school, during which time she had come home for the holidays to find her grandmother's position gradually declining, until from a fine house in Bloomsbury the old woman was reduced to poor lodgings in Grimsby Street, where the two had lived together since Edith left school, three years ago. The money left her by her father had been more than enough to pay the fees of the "select seminary for young ladies" where she had spent those seven years.
While at school she had kept much apart from the other boarders, and had made no friends, for she knew all the girls she met at Miss Graham's had homes much better than she could hope to possess after her grandmother had been compelled to leave Russell Square.
Edith did not care to take any of her school-fellows into the secret of their decaying fortunes. She was too proud to pretend to be their equal in wealth, and too sensitive to allow them to know how poor she was. She was the quietest, most silent, most reserved girl in all the school. The majority of those around her were the daughters of City men. Her father had been a barrister. He had never soiled his fingers with business. He had been a gentleman by the consecration of generations of forefathers who had never chaffered across a counter, never been in trade; and she was a lady. She did not despise those around her for their wealth or unfortunate origin. She simply kept herself to herself, and made no friends. She was kind and considerate to all, and polite almost to painfulness, but she would let no one near her. Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply perfect, if she only had a heart.