But one day Lady Blount, going into the pleasant morning room where Stella now usually had her being, found her sitting with tragic face, staring out of the window, the decorous “Times” lying a tousled, crumpled mass on the floor. She was alarmed.
“Darling, what's the matter?”
“Oh, it's hateful! It's unthinkable! Why did n't you tell me that such things happened nowadays?”
“What things?”
Stella pointed to the outraged organ of British respectability.
“A day or two ago—it 's all true that 's in the newspaper, is n't it? It's not made up? It all happens?—a day or two ago, while we were laughing here, a man took a knife and killed his wife and three children. It's incredible that there can be such monsters in the world.”
“My darling, when you know a little more,” faltered Lady Blount, “you will learn that there are abnormal people who do these dreadful things and get reported in the newspapers. But they have nothing to do with us. You must n't be frightened. We never come across them. Our life is quite different.”
“But what does that matter?” cried the girl, with agonized eyes. “They exist. They are among us, whether we happen to meet them or not. They are like the tramps.”
The world-worn woman, lined and faded, her red hair turned almost gray now, put her arms around the girl, and sought physically to bring the comfort that her intelligence was not acute enough to convey in speech. Stella hid her face against the kind bosom and sobbed.
“Auntie dear, I'm frightened, so frightened!”