Oldmeadow did not want the sandwiches, so, as soon as they reached Coldbrooks, he was led upstairs to Mrs. Chadwick’s room. He found his poor friend lying on the sofa, the blinds drawn down and a wet handkerchief on her forehead. She burst out crying as he entered. Oldmeadow sat down beside her and took her hand and, as he listened to her sobs, felt that he need not trouble to pity Adrienne.
“What I cannot, cannot understand, Roger,” she was at last able to say, and he realized that it was of Adrienne, not Meg, that she was speaking, “is how she can bear to treat us so. We all loved and trusted her. You know how I loved her, Roger. I felt Meg as safe in her hands as in my own. Oh, that wicked, wicked man! I hardly know him by sight. That makes it all so much more dreadful. All I do know is that his wife is a daughter of poor Evelyn Madderley, who broke her back out hunting.”
“I don’t believe there’s much harm in him, you know,” Oldmeadow suggested. “And I believe that he is sincerely devoted to Meg.”
“Harm, Roger!” poor Mrs. Chadwick wailed, “when he is a married man and Meg only a girl! Oh, if there is harm in anything there is in that! Running away with a girl and ruining her life! Barney will make him feel what he has done. Barney has gone?”
“Yes, he’s gone, and I am sure we can rely on him to speak his mind to Hayward.”
“And don’t you think he may bring Meg back, Roger? Nancy says I must not set my mind on it; but don’t you think she may be repenting already? My poor little Meg! She was hot-tempered and could speak very crossly if she was thwarted; but I think of her incessantly as she was when she was a tiny child. Self-willed; but so sweet and coaxing in her ways, with beautiful golden hair and those dark eyes. I always thought of Meg, with her beauty, as sure to marry happily; near us, I hoped”—Mrs. Chadwick began to sob again. “And now!—Will he find them in Paris? Will they not have moved on?”
“In any case he’ll be able to follow them up. I don’t imagine they’ll think of hiding.”
“No; I’m afraid they won’t. That is the worst of it! They won’t hide and every one will come to know and then what good will there be in her coming back! If only I’d had her presented last year, Roger! She can never go to court now,” Mrs. Chadwick wept, none the less piteously for her triviality. “To think that Francis’s daughter cannot go to court! She would have looked so beautiful, with my pearls and the feathers. The feathers are becoming to so few girls. Nancy could not wear them nearly so well. Nancy can go and my daughter can’t!”
“I don’t think the lack of feathers will weigh seriously upon Meg’s future, my dear friend.”
“Oh, but it’s what they stand for, Roger, that will weigh!” Mrs. Chadwick, even in her grief, retained her shrewdness. “It’s easy to laugh at the feathers, but you might really as well laugh at wedding-rings! To think that Francis’s daughter is travelling about with a man and without a wedding-ring! Or do you suppose they’ll have thought of it and bought one? It would be a lie, of course; but don’t you think that a lie would be justifiable under the circumstances?”