“Who’s down there?” she called in a voice scarcely above a whisper.
He went forward a little, so that the light from the room behind her might fall upon his face; she peered down at him anxiously.
“Don’t you know me?” he asked.
She did not reply, but turned and moved quickly to the end of the balcony and ran lightly down a little flight of iron steps which led to the ground. She came toward him, still without speaking, and with her hands clasped. Coming quite close, she looked into his face. “Why, it’s Comethup!” she said, and let her hands fall to her side.
There was something in the tone in which she spoke which chilled Comethup almost as much as the desolation of the place had done a few minutes before; and yet he could scarcely have said what it was that chilled him. There seemed, in her words and in her change of attitude, some disappointment; she might almost have been expecting to find another in the garden, and to have been unable altogether to conceal her regret at finding her hope unfulfilled. But, even while that thought was leaping through his mind, she had changed again, and was smiling into his face and clasping his hand, so that he almost felt that he had been mistaken and had misjudged her.
“Oh, how glad I am to see you!” she said quite naturally. “I’ve heard from the captain about you often; you know he’s never tired of talking of you. And you know we haven’t really met—you and I—since we were children, for when you came here five years ago we only saw each other for a day or two, and I scarcely remember what you were like, or what we said to each other.”
“That’s just the thought I have of you,” said Comethup. “I seem to have known, somehow, just what you would look like as a woman; but it’s the little ghost in the garden—this garden—I remember best. Do you remember that?”
She seemed to shudder a little as she looked about her. “Ah, the ghost!” she said. “Yes, I remember that; I remember how you came into the garden to find me. What a frightened baby I was then, to be sure—what a frightened, desolate baby!” She linked her hand in his arm and drew him with her along the path in between the trees. “Come,” she said, “walk with me here, as you did when we were little mites. Oh, it’s good to see you again; it’s good to look upon the face of a friend.” Something in her tones struck him to the quick; she seemed almost on the verge of tears. “Have you no friends, then?” he asked gently.
She looked up at him with a faint smile. “Well, the captain—and—and Mrs. Dawson—my governess, you know. I think that’s all. You’ve been all over the world, haven’t you?” she added suddenly.