“I know they will be awfully angry,” said Madeline, turning her white face to his. “I don’t know what they will say!”
“Not angry, when I have explained everything to their entire satisfaction. I will go security that you will not get into any trouble. I will see Mrs. Harper myself.”
And, really, half an hour later, as Madeline sat with her feet on the fender of a luxurious bedroom in the Railway Hotel—a magnificent apartment to her benighted eyes—with a hot coal fire before her, and a cup of steaming coffee in her hand, she began to cheer up, and to take a brighter view of the situation. What harm was it, after all? Missing a train—nothing so very dreadful. She would only get a scolding, at the worst. Alas! she was but too well accustomed to scoldings!
But Laurence Wynne, as he fought his way to another hotel through the soft, spongy snow, with the collar of his coat turned up, and his head bent against the stinging sleet, looked graver than he had done when he was talking to his late companion. It was an exceedingly awkward business, and he had an uncomfortable conviction that Miss Selina was at the bottom of the situation. She had sent them to one entrance, and arrived at the other herself; had requested them to wait—and miss the train. There had been an expression in her eye that was distinctly hostile, as he had suddenly encountered it over the top of her fan. Selina Harper meant mischief—had laid a neat little trap into which he had artlessly tumbled. “However,” he said to himself, as he entered the coffee-room of a palatial hotel, “half the evils in the world are those which have never happened. No doubt the worst of the adventure would merely resolve itself into a bad quarter of an hour—for him—with Mrs. Harper.”
CHAPTER V.
EXPELLED.
The next morning, leaving Madeline at the station to follow by a later train, Mr. Wynne called at Harperton, in order to have a little explanation. The maid’s face (she was an old maid) looked portentously solemn as she opened the door; and—oh! ominous objects!—two good-sized basket trunks, and a bonnet-box, stood waiting in the hall. As he glanced at them in passing, some one came out through a door just behind him, and said, in a biting tone—
“Dear me! I am surprised to see Mr. Wynne under the circumstances; but, as he is here, perhaps he can give an address for Miss West’s boxes?”
“May I ask what you mean, Miss Selina?” he said, turning to confront her the instant the drawing-room door was closed.
“I mean,” she replied, flushing to a dull brick colour, “that after her escapade of last evening, Miss West never enters this house again—a young lady who stayed out all night!” she concluded with a wild, dramatic gesture.
“But, you know, that was not her fault, Miss Selina. We waited exactly where you told us—at the bottom of the steps—and so missed the train. I could not get a cab, though I did my utmost, the snow was too deep. I left Miss West at the Railway Hotel and brought her from there this morning. She——”