tall, thin man, always busy with newspapers or sheets of manuscript; whose "Good morning, my dear!" in that peculiar husky voice of his, was nearly all Rotha ever heard him say. He took his breakfast, or his dinner, and went off to his study at once.
Rotha climbed the stairs to Mrs. Busby's dressing room, after the meal was over, and sat down to think. She was consuming herself in impatience and fretting. By and by Lesbia came in to see to the fire.
"Lesbia," said Rotha with sudden resolution, "will you do something for me?" She looked at the girl eagerly.
"Mebbe, miss. Like to know what 'tis, fust."
"It is only, to tell me something," said Rotha lowering her voice.
"Aint nothin' harder 'n to tell things," said the girl. "That's the hardest thing I know."
"It isn't hard, if you are willing."
"Don' know about that. Well, fire away, Miss Rotha. What you want?"
Rotha went first to the door and shut it. Then came back and stood by the table where Lesbia was lighting the gas drop.
"Lesbia, I want you to tell me-- You always open the door, don't you?"
"'Cept when I aint there."
"But in the evenings you do?"
"I'm pretty likely to, miss--if it aint my evening out."
"I want you to tell me--" Rotha lowered her voice to a whisper,--"if Mr. Southwode has been here lately?"
Lesbia stood silent, considering.
"You know him? You know Mr. Southwode?"
"He brought you here the fust, didn't he?"
"Yes. Yes, that is he. When was he here last?"
"Don't just 'member."
"But _about_ when? Two weeks or three weeks ago?"
"Well, 'pears to me as if I'd seen him later 'n that."
"When, Lesbia? Oh do tell me! do tell me!"
"Why he aint nothin' particular to you, is he?"
"He is _everything_ to me. He is the only friend I have got in the world. When was he here, Lesbia?"
"He's a mighty handsome gentleman, with hair lighter than your'n, and a mustaches?"
"Yes. He came with me that first day. Tell me, Lesbia!"
"But Miss Rotha, I can't see what you want to know fur?"
"Never mind. I tell you, he is all the friend I have got; and I'm afraid something is wrong, because I don't see him."
"I reckon there is," said Lesbia, not reassuringly.
"What?"
"Mrs. Busby will kill me."
"No, I shall not tell her you told me. O Lesbia, Lesbia, speak, speak!"
Lesbia glanced at the girl and saw her intense excitement, and seemed doubtful.
"You'll be so mad, you'll go tellin' the fust thing," she said.
Rotha sat down, in silence now, and gazed in Lesbia's face with her own growing white. Lesbia seemed at last overcome.
"He was here last week, and he was here this week," she said.
"This week!--and last week too. What day this week, Lesbia?"
"This here is Friday, aint it. Blessed if I kin keep the run o' the days. Let us see--Mr. Southwode was here the last time, Tuesday."
"Tuesday? And I was here studying."
"Then you don't know?" said Lesbia eyeing her. "He's done gone away."
"What do you mean? That can't be."
"He's done gone, miss. Sailed Wednesday. I heerd 'em talking about it at dinner. His name was in the list, they was sayin'; in the papers."
"Sailed Wednesday? O where to, Lesbia?"
"Don' know, miss; some place where the ships goes."
"England?"
"Mebbe. I doesn't know all de places on dis yere arth."
"How long is he going to be gone?"
"Can't tell dat, miss. I haint heerd nobody say. La, I dare say he'll come back. It's as easy to come as to go. Folks is allays goin' and comin'. But if you tell Mis' Busby, then I've done gone and lost my place, Miss Rotha."
Rotha stood still and said not a word more. But she turned so white that Lesbia looked on in alarm, expecting every moment she would faint. There was no faintness, however. Rotha was not one of those who lose present knowledge of misery in the weakness of a swoon. She turned white and even livid in the intensity of passion, the fury of rage and despair which held her; then, knowing that she must not betray Lesbia and that accordingly she must not meet anybody's eyes, she seized her books and rushed up stairs to her own little room.
It was dark there, but so much darker in the child's heart that she never noticed that. It was cold, yet not to her, for in her soul a fire was burning, hot enough to dispense with material warmth. She never missed that. But the walls of her room did seem to her a prison, a dreadful prison, from which she must flee if there were any place to flee to. Had her only refuge failed her? Was her one heart's treasure lost to her? Was the world empty, and all gone? The bewilderment of it almost equalled the pain. Rotha held her head in both hands and tried to find some hope, or some stay for her thoughts and for her feelings.
She charged it all presently with the certainty of intuition upon her aunt. For in her Rotha had not one particle of trust. She had received at her hands no unkind treatment, (what was the matter with the mantua-makers, though?) she had heard from her lips no unkind word; yet both would not have put such a distance between them as this want of trust did. It was Rotha's nature to despise where she could not trust; and here unhappily there was also the complication of fear. Somehow, she was sure, her aunt had done it; she had prevented Mr. Digby from seeing her; and now he was away, and how could she tell but cunning arrangements would be potent enough to keep him from seeing her evermore? Any reason for such machinations Rotha indeed failed to divine; why her aunt should desire to keep them apart, was a mere mystery; all the same, she had done it; and the chances were she would choose to do it permanently. Mr. Digby had been duped, or baffled somehow; else he would never have left the country without seeing his charge. She did not know before that Mr. Digby could be duped, or baffled; but if once or twice, why not again.
She would write to him. Ah, she had not his address, that he was to have given her. _He_ would write. Yes, but somebody else would get the letters. Rotha was of anything but a suspicious disposition, yet now suspicion after suspicion came in her mind. The possible moving cause for her aunt's action was entirely beyond her imagination; the action itself and the drift of it she discerned clearly. There rose in her a furious opposition and dislike towards her aunt, a storm of angry abhorrence. And yet, she was in Mrs. Busby's care, under her protection, and also--in her power. Rotha gnashed her teeth, mentally, as she reviewed the situation. But by degrees grief overweighed even anger and fear; grief so cutting, so desolating, so crushing, as the girl had hardly known in her life before; an agony of anguish which held her awake till late in the night; till feeling and sense were blunted with exhaustion, and in her misery she slept.
When the day came, Rotha awaked to a cold, dead sense of the state of things; the ashes of the fire that had burned so fiercely the night before; desolate and dreary as the ashes of a fire always are. She revolved while she was dressing her plan of action. She must have certain information from Mrs. Busby herself. She was certain indeed of what she had heard; but she must hear it from somebody besides Lesbia, and she must not betray Lesbia. She thought it all over, and went down stairs trembling in the excitement and the pain of what she had to do.
It was winter now in truth. The basement room where the family took their meals in ordinary, was a very warm and comfortable apartment; handsomely furnished; only Rotha always hated it for being half underground. The fire was burning splendidly; Mr. Busby sat in his easy chair at the side of the hearth next the light; Mrs. Busby was at the table preparing breakfast. Rotha stood by the fire and thought how she should begin. The sun shone very bright outside the windows. But New York had become a desert.
"Mr. Busby, will you come to the table?" said his wife. "Rotha, I am going to see about your cloak to-day."
Rotha could not say "th
ank you." She began to eat, for form's sake.
"What are you going to get her, mother?" Antoinette enquired.
"You can come along and see."
"Aunt Serena," said Rotha, trying to speak un-concernedly, "what has become of Mr. Digby--Mr. Southwode, I mean."
"I do not know, my dear," the lady answered smoothly.
"Why haven't I seen him?"
"My dear, you have not seen anybody. Some day I hope you will be able; but I begin to despair of the