The news of the catastrophe arrived two or three days before the return of the girl from her summer holidays. She learnt it in the first half- hour from her landlady, and sat in a dazed condition listening to a description of the grief-stricken father and the sympathy extended to him by his fellow-citizens. It appeared that nothing had passed his lips for two days.
"Shocking!" said Miss Lindsay, briefly. "Shocking !"
An instinctive feeling that the right and proper thing to do was to nurse his grief in solitude kept Mr. Barrett out of her way for nearly a week. When she did meet him she received a limp handshake and a greeting in a voice from which all hope seemed to have departed.
"I am very sorry," she said, with a sort of measured gentleness.
Mr. Barrett, in his hushed voice, thanked her.
"I am all alone now," he said, pathetically. "There is nobody now to care whether I live or die."
Miss Lindsay did not contradict him.
"How did it happen?" she inquired, after they had gone some distance in silence.