Both Bunny and his companion started and looked up, and Maud saw the girl’s face fully for the first time—­a nervous little face with haunting wide blue eyes made more intense by the short thick black lashes that surrounded them, eyes that seemed to plead for kindness.  There was charm about the pointed chin and a good deal of sweetness about the moulding of the mouth.  But it was the eyes that held Maud’s attention.  They were the eyes of a creature who has known the wild agony of fear and is not easily reassured.  Yet the face was the face of a child.

She leaned out a little further on her sill and addressed the stranger.  “Come up and speak to me!” she said very kindly.  “Bunny will show you the way.”

A shy flickering smile answered her.  She cast a questioning look at Bunny.

“Yes, that’s Maud—­my sister,” said Bunny.  “Come along!  This way!”

They entered the house by a French window, and Maud drew back into her room.  What was there in that childish face that appealed so tremendously to her womanhood—­wholly banishing her first involuntary sense of recoil?  She could not have said, she was only conscious of the woman in her throbbing with a deep compassion.  She stood and waited for the child’s coming with a strangely poignant expectation.

She heard Bunny’s voice talking cheerily on the stairs, but his words provoked no response.  She went to the door and opened it.

Bunny was leading the way; in fact his companion seemed to be lagging very considerably in the rear.

Maud moved out into the passage, and Bunny stood to one side with a courteous gesture.  “Mademoiselle Antoinette Larpent!” he announced.

The small figure in blue drew itself together with a certain bravado and came forward.

Maud held out her hands.  “My dear child,” she said, “I expected you long ago.”

The hands she clasped were very small and cold.  They did not cling to her as she had half expected.  The blue eyes flashed her a single nervous glance and fell.

“I’m sorry I’m late, madam,” said the visitor in a low, punctilious voice.

Maud felt amused and chilled in the same moment.  “Come and sit down!” she said.  “We will have some tea upstairs.  Bunny, go and order it, will you?”

“With pleasure,” said Bunny.  “And may I return?”

She smiled at him as she passed an arm about the girl’s narrow shoulders.  “Yes, you can come back when it’s ready.  Come in here, dear!  You will like to take off your things.  How long have you been here?”

“Only five minutes,” came the murmured answer; she thought it had a deprecating sound.

“You must be tired,” she said kindly.  “You came from town?  How is it you are so late?  Did you miss your train?”

“No, madam.”  Very nervously came the reply.  The contrast between this and the boyish freedom of manner on the terrace a few seconds before would have been ludicrous if it had not been somehow pathetic.