Page:Bat Wing 1921.djvu/61

Rh “In what way?”

“Oh, in a silly, womanish sort of way. Of course she is a wonderful manager; she rules the house with a rod of iron. But really I haven’t anything to do here, and I feel frightfully out of place sometimes. Then the Colonel Oh, but what am I talking about?”

“Won’t you tell me what it is that the Colonel fears?”

“You know that he fears something, then?”

“Of course. That is why Paul Harley is here.”

A change came over the girl’s face; a look almost of dread.

“I wish I knew what it all meant.”

“You are aware, then, that there is something wrong?”

“Naturally I am. Sometimes I have been so frightened that I have made up my mind to leave the very next day.”

“You mean that you have been frightened at night?” I asked with curiosity.

“Dreadfully frightened.”

“Won’t you tell me in what way?”

She looked up at me swiftly, then turned her head aside, and bit her lip.

“No, not now,” she replied. “I can’t very well.”

“Then at least tell me why you stayed?”

“Well,” she smiled rather pathetically, “for one thing, I haven’t anywhere else to go.”

“Have you no friends in England?”

She shook her head.

“No. There was only poor daddy, and he died over two years ago. That was when I went to Nice.”

“Poor little girl,” I said; and the words were spoken before I realized their undue familiarity.

An apology was on the tip of my tongue, but Miss