"Would you wish me to wait for a nanser, ma'am? Doctor he didn't
say ..."
In heaven or earth, what answer would she find to this?
"No, you needn't wait."
"Do you feel faint, ma'am?"
"Faint?... No, why should I?"
The young person, convicted of impertinence and silliness besides,
turned red, but would not remove her gaze from the lady's face.
"The--the heat we been havin', ma'am. I don't know--it's so sickenin',
kind of. I--I fainted last week, twice, ma'am."
Something nameless in the little creature's wide-eyed gaze, timid and
yet thrilled, arrested Carlisle in the act of shutting the door upon
her. Was it possible that this singular messenger of Fate had knowledge
of the message she brought?
"Why do you stare at me so?"
The girl replied with simplicity:
"I can't help it, ma'am, you look so sweet."
Carlisle leaned against the polished edge of the glass and oak door. The
same chill little hand clenched the unfinished pages to Hugo, and
Vivian's only too fatally finished note. She perceived who this girl
must be, and even in this moment her thought was riveted by the wild
suspicion that her secret had already been betrayed.
"You live at the Dabney House, I suppose?--you're a buncher at the
Works?... How did you know me--that this note was for me?"
Here was a puzzler, indeed. By what instinct had little Kern known, the
instant the door began to open, that this, and no other, was Mr. V.V.'s
beautiful lady?...
"How could you be anybody else, ma'am?... You couldn't."
"I believe I have heard Dr. Vivian speak of you. Possibly," she said,
with stony bitterness, "you have heard of me in the same way?"
The girl seemed to shrink a little at her tone. "Oh, ma'am--no! To
_me_! No, ma'am! He _wouldn't_ ..."
"But he is a great friend of yours?"
Kern raised a hand to her heart, understanding only too much that was
not so. It was a glorious moment for her, and a terrible one.
"No, ma'am," said she, shaking her head a number of times. "I'm only his
charity sick."
She added, as if to make the repudiation complete: "Mr. V.V.'s friends
are ladies, ma'am."
"Mr. V.V.?"
Confronted by her damning slip, the young person turned scarlet, but she
stood her ground with a little gasp.
"A nickname, ma'am, that _all_ his sick call him by...."
A fair enough rally, no doubt, but on the whole it accomplished nothing.
Just in the middle of it, the lady had shut the door in the small
vulgarian's face.
Carlisle clutched the two letters to her breast. The door having been
shut, she was alone in the world. She went up two flights in the Sunday
afternoon stillness, and locked herself in her room. Mamma should not
enter here on her gliding heels.
So this, after all, was what he meant by "seeing." Having decoyed her
with false hopes for five days, he struck from ambush, giving her no
chance to speak for herself. Well, she would be hard, too. She would
make no answer, and when he spoke, she would deny ...
That the worst had now come to the worst, she had not entertained a
doubt. Accordingly the emotional revulsion was strong when, breaking
open the envelope with cold fingers, Carlisle found that the letter
within was in a different handwriting from the superscription. It was
not from Dr. Vivian at all.
However, her instant uprush of relief was somewhat mitigated when she
saw--as she did in the first glance, for this hand had been not
unfamiliar to her once--that the letter Vivian enclosed to her was from
Jack Dalhousie.
Standing rigid by the window, she read with parted lips:
WEYMOUTH, May 14th.