"Why isn't everybody here?" she demanded, with a
laugh that was again nervous and almost hysterical. "Why isn't Addie Tristram here? Ah, and your old Cholderton?"
"Hark, I hear wheels on the road," said Mr Neeld.
Mina looked hard at him. "She shall do right," she said, "and Harry shall not go."
"Surely they'll make the best of a——?"
"Oh, we're not talking of your Ivers and your Broadleys!" she interrupted indignantly. "If they were like that, we should never have been where we are at all."
How true it was, how lamentably true! One had to presuppose Addie Tristram, and turns of fortune or of chance wayward as Addie herself—and to reckon with the same blood, now in young and living veins.
"I can't bear it," whispered Mina.
"He'll expect you to be calm and composed," Neeld reminded her.
"Then give me a cigarette," she implored despairingly.