“Oh, old Hero!” she exclaimed pettishly. “He will tell them all I have come!”
For she had wished to slip in unobserved. The humiliation of her return in this wise seemed less when the kindly old roof should be above her head. But the dog met her, fierce and furious, at the fence of the door yard—how she had hated that fence; she had wanted the grove and yard thrown together like some fine park. As the old retainer recognized her the complication of his barks which he could not forego, in view of her capacity as stranger, with his wheezes and whines of ecstasy, as greeting to an old friend, while he leaped and gamboled about her, brought her uncle and aunt, every chick and child, the servants from the outhouses, and all the dogs on the place to make cheerful acclaim of welcome.
So long had it been since she had heard this hearty, genuine note of disinterested affection that it came like balm to her lacerated heart, and suddenly there seemed no more need for pride, for dissimulation, for self-restraint. She broke down and burst into a flood of tears, the group lachrymose in sympathy and wiping their eyes.
She had planned throughout the night how best and when to tell her story, but it was disclosed without preface or method, before she had been in the house ten minutes, her aunt cautiously closing the door of the sitting-room the instant Mr. Floyd-Rosney’s name was mentioned and her uncle looking very grave.
“You were quite right in coming at once to us, my dear,” he said kindly. “Be sure you shall not be shipped out of the country.”
He was a tall, heavy man, somewhat spare and angular, and his large well-formed features expressed both shrewdness and kindness. He had abundant grizzled hair and his keen gray eyes were deeply set under thick dark eyebrows. He was a fair-minded man one could see at a glance, a thoroughly reliable man in every relation of life, a gentleman of the old school.
“Some arrangement will surely be made about the baby; I shall love to see the little fellow again. Set your heart at rest. I will communicate at once with Mr. Floyd-Rosney, as your nearest relative, standing in loco parentis.”
“And give me some breakfast,” said Paula, lapsing into the old childish whine of a spoiled household pet. “I have had nothing to eat since yesterday at lunch.”
The husband and wife exchanged a glance over her head.
“And before I forget it——” she raised herself to an upright position and took from her bag the twenty dollar bill. “Please write and return this to old Colonel Kenwynton. I should be ashamed to sign my name to such a letter. He would lend it to me—though I didn’t need it after he and Adrian Ducie—Randal Ducie’s brother—had lent me the money to buy my ticket.”