I secured the rooms within an hour. It was strange to me to walk again in that place, over whose pavements my uneasy feet had trod twenty years before, that time I waited for Gavin Hockley. I was glad to find that the rooms were not in that building; but they were too close at hand to be pleasant. I walked away, with the old thoughts beginning to surge up again in my brain; and once again I was desperately afraid. I knew that some grim Fate was driving me on; I could only set my weak shoulders against the storm that pressed me forward; but I was powerless to stay the force of it.
I came away from the flat, leaving Jervis Fanshawe and the manservant still there. I understood that the manservant was to be sent away that night, and the flat locked up. I walked to the lodging that the elder Barbara had taken; I felt that I owed it to her to tell her at least that her child was gone, but was safe from Murray Olivant. The decent woman who opened the door to me told me that "Mrs. Avaline" was at home; it had only occurred to me at the last moment to ask for her in that name she had given herself.
Barbara met me at the door of the room; she held out her hands to me, and seemed, I thought, strangely excited. Nor would she for a moment let me into the room; she stood there looking at me, and I felt her hands tremble in mine.
"Guess—guess what has happened!" she whispered; and at the look in her eyes I suddenly felt myself trembling too. I thrust her aside, and went quickly into the little shabby room. A lamp was burning on the table, and some needlework lay beside it. And on a couch under the window lay that younger Barbara—peacefully sleeping.
I stood there, looking down at her like a man in a dream; I could not understand what had happened. It was only when the mother began to speak to me in her quiet voice that I understood how she had found the child.
"I wanted to see you—to be near you; I went to that address you had told me, where you were living with Fanshawe," she said softly. "I waited about, afraid to go in; and while I waited there I saw you come out with the man I suppose must have been Murray Olivant—the man I had seen down at Hammerstone Market. I could not speak to you then; I waited in the hope that you would return. And while I waited I saw this dear girl come stealing out of the place like a frightened ghost; I knew, of course, who she was, because I had seen her down at the old house, and because she is so like what I was so long ago. She did not know me, of course; she never will know me; but when I spoke to her she seemed to turn in her distress and fear to me instinctively. She came here with me willingly; she will be safe here for the present."
"Thank God!" I whispered, as I looked down at the sleeping girl. "This is all as it should be; now we can decide what is best to be done."
"I mean to take her back to her father," she said quietly. Then, as I started and looked at her, she shook her head quietly, and smiled. "Don't be afraid, Charlie; I'm not going back to him myself. I could not do that now. But the girl is different; the girl must go back to the home that is hers—and to her father."
"There to be found by Murray Olivant whenever he likes," I reminded her. "You have forgotten that. You—an unknown woman; I—a felon and an outcast; what can we do to protect her against him?" I stood there looking down at the sleeping girl; my heart was beating fast. "But I think I know the way," I said slowly.
"You know the way?" She was looking at me keenly.