Page:The Wreck.djvu/184

CHAPTER XXXVIII

One afternoon Annada Babu went upstairs in search of Hemnalini, looking forward to taking tea alone with her. He looked for her in the sitting-room up-- stairs and in her bedroom but she was in neither room, and he learned from the bearer that she had not left the house.

Vaguely uneasy about her he ascended to the roof. As far as the eye could see stretched an unbroken succession of housetops, faintly illuminated by the pale winter sunshine. The evening breeze veered fitfully from one quarter to another. Hemnalini sat buried in thought in the shadow of the stair-turret.

Annada Babu emerged on to the roof and stood be- hind her but she was oblivious of his presence. When at last he went softly up to her and laid his hand on her shoulder she started in surprise, and then blushed with confusion; he had seated himself beside her be- fore she could rise to her feet. He waited a moment or two then sighed deeply. "Oh, Hem, if only your mother were alive now! I'm no use to you at all!"

This piteous outcry from the old man roused Hem- nalini from the semblance of stupor into which she had fallen and her eyes sought her father's face. Oh, the love, the sympathy, and the pain that she saw there! A sad change had come over his expression in the last few days. It was her old father who had borne the brunt of the storm that had burst over Hemnalini; he had never relaxed his endeavours to alleviate his daughter's distress; and when he had found all his efforts to comfort her unavailing his

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