Lizzette burst into a laugh so resounding that it penetrated the room beyond; but Elsie’s distressed face was too much for her tender sympathies. “Ma petite fille,” she exclaimed, “how stupid ees your old Lizzette. Eh bien, I vill explain. Herbeart know not you live here; he tell me so, and I nevair know Herbeart Lynn to lie. So you see eet ees not ma petite Elsie zat bring him——”
“Lizzette! Lizzette!” cried Elsie, beside herself with mortification. “I did not mean it that way! I’m not so vain as you think; but to tell the truth he has always eyed me so, when I went to confer with Mrs. Mason, that I have noticed she was uneasy and cross when he was in the room. That is all in the world there is in it, except that as ‘Elsie the cook’ I decline to sit at table with his high mightiness. Honestly, I do not want ever to speak to him.”
“Herbeart haf ze good heart zat harm nobody.”
“That may be true; but the gulf between us is considered too wide by his circle ever to be bridged over by the commonplaces of even the simplest association. You know I am right, Lizzette, and no false vanity prompts what I say. I do want to keep my place, and Mrs. Mason would be furious if she knew I broke bread at the same table with her brother.”
“Ah, zat Helen! Oui, Elsie, vous avez raison. Zis ees too bad. Mais you sall not go hungry; here in ze pantry I set you some dinner.”
“No, Lizzette, I can’t eat,” said Elsie disconsolately. “I’ll just go down to Aunt Liza’s and stay till the six-o’clock train. Tell Meg how the case stands. I know she’ll approve my view of it.”
“Helas,” said Lizzette sorrowfully. “Ze dinner vill be spoiled for Margaret and ze rest of us; but maybe zat vill be ze best way out of trouble.”
It was growing dusk when Elsie took her seat in the car on her way back to the city. She was tired, faint, and overwrought. A disturbing influence had set again at work all those little discontents which Margaret’s calm reasoning had well-nigh dispelled, and she fairly gasped with horror when she saw Herbert Lynn enter the car and deliberately take the vacant seat beside her.
“Miss Elsie,” he coolly asked, “will you be kind enough to tell me why I am an object of such aversion to you?”
“I—I—don’t know what you mean,” she stammered helplessly.