I fell back breathing hard, and Miss Althorpe’s eyes, meeting mine, grew dark with horror. Indeed she was about to utter a cry herself, but I made an imperative motion, and she merely shrank farther away towards the door.
Meantime I had bent forward and laid my hand on the trembling figure before me.
“Miss Oliver,” I said, “rouse yourself, I pray. I have a message for you from Mrs. Desberger.”
She turned her head, looked at me like a person in a daze, then slowly moved and sat up.
“Who are you?” she asked, surveying me and the space about her with eyes which seemed to take in nothing till they lit upon Miss Althorpe’s figure standing in an attitude of mingled shame and sympathy by the half-open door.
“Oh, Miss Althorpe!” she entreated, “I pray you to excuse me. I did not know you wanted me. I have been asleep.”
“It is this lady who wants you,” answered Miss Althorpe. “She is a friend of mine and one in whom you can confide.”
“Confide!” This was a word to rouse her. She turned livid, and in her eyes as she looked my way both terror and surprise were visible. “Why should you think I had anything to confide? If I had, I should not pass by you, Miss Althorpe, for another.”
There were tears in her voice, and I had to remember the victim just laid away in Woodlawn, not to bestow much more compassion on this woman than she rightfully deserved. She had a magnetic voice and a magnetic presence, but that was no reason why I should forget what she had done.
“No one asks for your confidence,” I protested, “though it might not hurt you to accept a friend whenever you can get one. I merely wish, as I said before, to give you a message from Mrs. Desberger, under whose roof you stayed before coming here.”
“I am obliged to you,” she responded, rising to her feet, and trembling very much. “Mrs. Desberger is a kind woman; what does she want of me?”
So I was on the right track; she acknowledged Mrs. Desberger.
“Nothing but to return you this. It fell out of your pocket while you were dressing.” And I handed her the little red pincushion I had taken from the Van Burnams’ front room.
She looked at it, shrunk violently back, and with difficulty prevented herself from showing the full depth of her feelings.
“I don’t know anything about it. It is not mine, I don’t know it!” And her hair stirred on her forehead as she gazed at the small object lying in the palm of my hand, proving to me that she saw again before her all the horrors of the house from which it had been taken.
“Who are you?” she suddenly demanded, tearing her eyes from this simple little cushion and fixing them wildly on my face. “Mrs. Desberger never sent me this. I—”
“You are right to stop there,” I interposed, and then paused, feeling that I had forced a situation which I hardly knew how to handle.
The instant’s pause she had given herself seemed to restore her self-possession. Leaving me, she moved towards Miss Althorpe.
“I don’t know who this lady is,” said she, “or what her errand here with me may mean. But I hope that it is nothing that will force me to leave this house which is my only refuge.”
Miss Althorpe, too greatly prejudiced in favor of this girl to hear this appeal unmoved, notwithstanding the show of guilt with which she had met my attack, smiled faintly as she answered:
“Nothing short of the best reasons would make me part from you now. If there are such reasons, you will spare me the pain of making use of them. I think I can so far trust you, Miss Oliver.”
No answer; the young girl looked as if she could not speak.
“Are there any reasons why I should not retain you in my house, Miss Oliver?” the gentle mistress of many millions went on. “If there are, you will not wish to stay, I know, when you consider how near my marriage day is, and how undisturbed my mind should be by any cares unattending my wedding.”
And still the girl was silent, though her lips moved slightly as if she would have spoken if she could.
“But perhaps you are only unfortunate,” suggested Miss Althorpe, with an almost angelic look of pity—I don’t often see angels in women. “If that is so, God forbid that you should leave my protection or my house. What do you say, Miss Oliver?”
“That you are God’s messenger to me,” burst from the other, as if her tongue had been suddenly loosed. “That misfortune, and not wickedness, has driven me to your doors; and that there is no reason why I should leave you unless my secret sufferings make my presence unwelcome to you.”
Was this the talk of a frivolous woman caught unawares in the meshes of a fearful crime? If so, she was a more accomplished actress than we had been led to expect even from her own words to her disgusted husband.
“You look like one accustomed to tell the truth,” proceeded Miss Althorpe. “Do you not think you have made some mistake, Miss Butterworth?” she asked, approaching me with an ingenuous smile.
I had forgotten to caution her not to make use of my name, and when it fell from her lips I looked to see her unhappy companion recoil from me with a scream.
But strange to say she evinced no emotion, and seeing this, I became more distrustful of her than ever; for, for her to hear without apparent interest the name of the chief witness in the inquest which had been held over the remains of the woman with whose death she had been more or less intimately concerned, argued powers of duplicity such as are only associated with guilt or an extreme simplicity of character. And she was not simple, as the least glance
