Page:The Father Confessor, Stories of Danger and Death.djvu/266

256 should come in and bid them good-night They were staying—at Mrs. Allison's.

"Well, they had a lot of land there, and for generations their ancestors owned slaves. When their second child was born the Allisons suddenly left the South; sold up everything, and went to live for some time in New York; later in Washington. In both places they were rather shunned by society. Then they came to London."

Miss Anderson drew back into the shadow. "I do hope there is nothing——" she began, but was silenced by a groan of "Oh, do be quiet. Go on, Mrs. Donald."

"There is certainly nothing, or I should not be here," said Mrs. Donald stiffly. "In fact, there's little more to tell. You know I have lived a long time in America. It was there I knew about the Allisons. My little girl was at the same school the Allison girls went to—of course, years afterwards. She is still a child—but when there she met pupils who remembered Virginia and Lucy, and they told her strange things about one of the two—how different she was from other girls, and, indeed, they inferred the feeling of the school was so