“Yes,” I said gently.
“Is he looking for—me?” she half whispered.
Then, as I did not answer for a moment, she slipped down by the big chair, and burst into violent, bitter weeping.
I knelt down by her, holding her in my arms, and smoothing the hair back from her face.
“Don’t cry, child, don’t cry, for God’s sake. You’re safe here. I’ll take care of you. Don’t cry, darling. Don’t cry. I know—I know everything.”
“Oh, but you don’t!”
“I think I do.” And after a moment, as her sobs grew quieter, I asked, “It was you who took the dagger, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“That was why you wanted me to show you around? And why you pretended to faint?”
Again she nodded. It was a strange thought to come to me at the moment, but it shot into my mind that I was glad her motive was what it had been—rather than the idle and morbid curiosity I had accused her of at the time. How gallantly she had played her part that day, inwardly racked with fear and trepidation as she must have been. Poor little soul, bearing the burden of a moment’s impetuous action.
“Why did you take the dagger?” I asked presently.
She replied as simply as a child, “I was afraid there might be finger marks on it.”
“But didn’t you remember that you had worn gloves?”
She shook her head as though bewildered, and then said slowly, “Are you going to give me up to—to the police?”
“Good God, no!”
Her eyes sought mine long and earnestly, and then she asked in a little quiet voice that sounded afraid of itself, “Why not?”
It seemed a strange place and a strange time for a declaration of love—and God knows, in all my imagining, I had never pictured love coming to me in such a guise. But I answered simply and naturally enough, “Because I love you, Cinderella,”
She bent her head down, as though ashamed, and muttered
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