“See that the poor thing gets some breakfast,” had been Allerton’s parting command, and having finished the room, Steptoe went down the flight of stairs to carry out this injunction.
He was on the third step from the landing when the door of the back room opened, and a little, gray figure, hatted and jacketed, crept out stealthily. She was plainly ready for the street, an intention understood by Beppo, the late Mrs. Allerton’s red cocker spaniel, who was capering about her in the hope of sharing the promenade.
As Steptoe came to a halt, the girl ran toward him.
“Oh, mister, I gotta get out of this swell dump. Show me the way, for God’s sake!”
To say that Steptoe was thinking rapidly would be to describe his mental processes incorrectly. He never thought; he received illuminations. Some such enlightenment came to him now, inducing him to say, ceremoniously, “Madam can’t go without ’er breakfast.”
“I don’t want any breakfast,” she protested, breathlessly. “All I want is to get away. I’m frightened.”
“I assure madam that there’s nothink to be afryde of in this ’ouse. Mr. Allerton is the most honorable—” he pronounced the initial h—“young man that hever was born. I valeted ’is father before ’im and know that ’e wouldn’t ’urt a fly. If madam’ll trust 53 me—Besides, Mr. Allerton left word with me as you was to be sure to ’ave your breakfast, and I shouldn’t know how to fyce ’im if ’e was to know that you’d gone awye without so much as a hegg.”
She wrung her hands. “I don’t want to see him. I couldn’t.”
“Madam won’t see ’im. ’E’s gone for the dye. ’E don’t so often heat at ’ome—’ardly never.”
Of the courses before her Letty saw that yielding was the easiest. Besides, it would give her her breakfast, which was a consideration. Though she had nominally dined on the previous evening, she had not been able to eat; she had been too terrified. Never would she forget the things that had happened after she had given her consent in the Park.