CHAPTER V.
Spencer Vance had become greatly interested in the beautiful
Renie during the walk along the beach. He had become deeply
impressed with the purity, yet weirdness of her character. He
had pressed the girl for some reminiscence of her early
childhood, but she had no recollections beyond the sea and the
fisherman's cabin where she had lived with old Tom Pearce and
his wife.
Her supposed father had for years rowed her every morning
across the bay to the mainland, where she had attended the
village school, from whence she had passed to the high school,
at which her reputed father had supported her for a couple of
years.
Mrs. Pearce died suddenly one day after a few hours' illness.
Just before her death Renie was alone with her in the room.
The woman had been unconscious, but she momentarily recovered
consciousness and summoned the girl to her bedside and
attempted to communicate some parting intelligence, but alas!
she only succeeded in uttering a few disjointed exclamations,
suggestive, but not directly and fully intelligible. The
half-uttered exclamations only served to confirm certain
suspicions that had long floated unsuggested through the
girl's mind, and her disappointment was bitter when the icy
hand of death strangled the communications which the dying
woman was seeking to make.
The girl had formed a sort of attachment for Tom Pearce. The
man was a good-natured, jolly sailor sort of a fellow, and, as
intimated, had always treated the girl with the utmost
kindness and consideration.
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