Miss Vincent had returned three days earlier.
"Could I see her?"
The man—an old family butler—was not sure. He believed that Miss Vincent had an engagement that afternoon, but he would enquire.
"I won't keep Miss Vincent long. Only just a minute!" pleaded Magda.
She was shown into the breakfast-room, and the man disappeared. Returning, he said that Miss Vincent would come presently, if Miss Royston could wait.
She was left in the breakfast-room, not taken upstairs, as she had hoped, into Patricia's boudoir—a sure sign that the interview was to be brief. There she sat, and waited long. Patricia often kept people waiting—those whom she counted to be of small social importance; but she had never kept Magda quite so long before. Gloomy forebodings attacked the girl. Did Patricia not care to see her, after all these weeks of separation? Had she said or done something that Patricia did not like? Could it be that some inkling had reached Patricia of the coming of the Majors to Burwood, and that she counted a friend of theirs no longer a fit friend for herself?
Magda had time enough in which to conjure up no end of direful imaginings. Nearly three-quarters of an hour passed, before a light step came down the passage, and Patricia appeared, wearing one of her daintiest frocks and most bewitching hats, evidently ready for some social function. She was drawing on a pair of white gloves.
"Well, Magda—how are you? So sorry to keep you waiting, dear, but I'm awfully busy since getting back. And I have had to dress early, so as to be ready in time. I can give you two or three minutes now." She just touched her lips to Magda's flushed cheek, eluding a proffered embrace. "Don't crumple me, dear, please. Well—are you quite well, and desperately busy too?"
"I'm never too busy to come here. Never!"
"You told me you were working very hard."