“What are you staring at—­idiot?”

The boy grinned hysterically, a little frightened at Cissy’s straightened brows and snapping eyes.

“Get away! there’s no answer.”

The boy ran off, and Cissy returned to the drawing-room.  Then it occurred to her that the servant had not answered the bell.  She rang again furiously.  There was no response.  She called down the basement staircase, and heard only the echo of her voice in the depths.  How still the house was!  Were they all out,—­Susan, Norah, the cook, the Chinaman, and the gardener?  She ran down into the kitchen; the back door was open, the fires were burning, dishes were upon the table, but the kitchen was empty.  Upon the floor lay a damp copy of the “extra.”  She picked it up quickly.  Several black headlines stared her in the face.  “Enormous Defalcation!” “Montagu Trixit Absconded!” “50,000 Dollars Missing!” “Run on the Bank!”

She threw the paper through the open door as she would have hurled back the accusation from living lips.  Then, in a revulsion of feeling lest any one should find her there, she ran upstairs and locked herself in her own room.

So that was what it all meant!  All!—­from the laugh of the Secamp girls to the turning away of the townspeople as she went by.  Her father was a thief who had stolen money from the bank and run away leaving her alone to bear it!  No!  It was all a lie—­a wicked, jealous lie!  A foolish lie, for how could he steal money from his own bank?  Cissy knew very little of her father—­perhaps that was why she believed in him; she knew still less of business, but she knew that he did.  She had often heard them say it—­perhaps the very ones who now called him names.  He! who had made Canada City what it was!  He, who, Windibrook said, only to-day, had, like Moses, touched the rocks of the Canada with his magic wand of Finance, and streams of public credit and prosperity had gushed from it!  She would never speak to them again!  She would shut herself up here, dismiss all the servants but the Chinaman, and wait until her father returned.

There was a knock, and the entreating voice of Norah, the cook, outside the door.  Cissy unlocked it and flung it open indignantly.

“Ah!  It’s yourself, miss—­and I never knew ye kem back till I met that gossoon of a hotel waiter in the street,” said the panting servant.  “Sure it was only an hour ago while I was at me woorrck in the kitchen, and Jim rushes in and sez:  ’For the love of God, if iver ye want to see a blessed cint of the money ye put in the masther’s bank, off wid ye now and draw it out—­for there’s a run on the bank!’”

“It was an infamous lie,” said Cissy fiercely.

“Sure, miss, how was oi to know?  And if the masther has gone away, it’s ownly takin’ me money from the other divils down there that’s drawin’ it out and dividin’ it betwixt and between them.”