The servants passed her on the stairs with trunks and luggage of various kinds; but she was too much engrossed with her own thoughts to notice them. Suddenly the words, ‘Mr. Walpole’s room,’ caught her ear, and she asked, ‘Has any one come?’
Yes, two gentlemen had just arrived. A third was to come that night, and Miss O’Shea might be expected at any moment.
‘Where was Miss Kate?’ she inquired.
‘In her own room at the top of the house.’
Thither she hastened at once.
‘Be a dear good girl,’ cried Kate as Nina entered, ‘and help me in my many embarrassments. Here are a flood of visitors all coming unexpectedly. Major Lockwood and Mr. Walpole have come. Miss Betty will be here for dinner, and Mr. Atlee, whom we all believed to be in Asia, may arrive to-night. I shall be able to feed them; but how to lodge them with any pretension to comfort is more than I can see.’
‘I am in little humour to aid any one. I have my own troubles—worse ones, perhaps, than playing hostess to disconsolate travellers.’
‘And what are your troubles, dear Nina?’
‘I have half a mind not to tell you. You ask me with that supercilious air that seems to say, “How can a creature like you be of interest enough to any one or anything to have a difficulty?”’
‘I force no confidences,’ said the other coldly.