"What a thundering row!" said Fred.
A curious, scuffling sound, coming from the room below, was distinctly audible.
"Mdlle. Stéphanie appears to be giving an afternoon dance," said Lucy.
"I will go and see if anything is the matter," remarked Gertrude, rising.
As a matter of fact she snatched eagerly at this opportunity for separating herself from this group of idle chatterers. She was tired, dispirited, beset with a hundred anxieties; weighed down by a cruel sense of responsibility.
How was it all to end? she asked herself, as, oblivious of Mdlle. Stéphanie's performance, she lingered on the little dusky landing. That first wave of business, born of the good-natured impulse of their friends and acquaintance, had spent itself, and matters were looking very serious indeed for the firm of G. and L. Lorimer.
"We couldn't go on taking Fred's guineas for ever," she thought, a strange laugh rising in her throat. "Perhaps, though, it was wrong of me to refuse to be interviewed by The Waterloo Place Gazette. But we are photographers, not mountebanks!" she added, in self-justification.
In a few minutes she had succeeded in suppressing all outward marks of her troubles, and had rejoined the people in the sitting-room.
"Mrs. Maryon says there is nothing the matter," she cried, with her delightful smile, "and that there is no accounting for these foreigners."
Laughter greeted her words, then Conny, rising and shaking out her splendid skirts, declared that it was time to go.