"Who is he, then, this man, this Berdenstein?" I asked her under my breath. Her words had had a powerful effect upon me. She was terribly in earnest. I knew that she was speaking for my good. I trusted her. I could not help it.
She shook her head. Her eyes were full of horror.
"It is not for me to tell you, child. It is one of those things which God forbid that you may ever know."
Then there was a silence between us. After all this mystery whose shadows seemed to surround me was like a far away thing. My present trouble weighed heaviest upon me. The other was vague, even though it was terrible. My father's disappearance was a real and terrible calamity staring me in the face. It engrossed all my thoughts. They would tell me nothing, those two. I dared not go to Berdenstein. Already I was afraid of him. I remembered his smile when I spoke of my father, and I shuddered. Supposing they had met. Supposing they had come together face to face in some lonely house. Perhaps his letter had been a decoy. The man's face, with its cruel mouth and sardonic smile, suddenly loomed large in my memory. I sprang to my feet with a cry of fear. I was terrified with my own thoughts. Bruce Deville came over to me, and I found him studying my face with a new expression, the meaning of which I could not fathom.
"If you will come to the window, Miss Ffolliot," he said, "I think you will see something which will relieve some part of your anxiety at any rate."
I hastened eagerly to his side. Only a few yards away, walking steadily in the middle of the hard, white road, was a figure in sombre black. His shoulders were bent, and his pale face downcast. His whole appearance was that of a weary and dejected wanderer. These things I realized more completely afterwards; for the present a sense of almost intolerable relief drowned every other motion. It was my father--he had returned.
I should have rushed out to him, but Bruce Deville laid his hand very softly upon my shoulder. I could not have believed that any touch of his could be so gentle.
"I wish you would take my advice, Miss Ffolliot," he said. "Take the path through the plantation home, and don't let your father see you leaving here. It would be better, would it not, Adelaide?" he added.