Her mother's eyes smiled back sympathy.
"It's unlucky for Mollie and Crow not to be together," she said, "but of course Lady Shard wants Mollie and of course she can't leave Sir Marmaduke alone, so we others must e'en put up with it all. Something will turn up presently. I feel it in my bones," said Mrs. Romilly, "and meanwhile don't let's cross bridges before we come to them. I know nothing will be as bad as one fears, it never is."
She looked at Adrian, who made no response.
"Let's hope," said Crow.
"Has Mollie gone?" asked Pamela, suddenly thinking of an explanation for the motor-car. She put her foot in it, of course.
"My good girl, do have a grain of sense," begged Adrian, "how could she be gone, when she was out on the Messenger with us till nearly seven o'clock?"
"She goes to-morrow," explained Christobel, "not finally of course. She comes back about Tuesday--she's got to pack and take up things Lady Shard wants, you see. Then she'll go for good--I mean for about six weeks--after that."
Pamela made no comment. She was trying to fit that car piled with luggage into this sudden development of Bell Bay doings. Hitherto, the great K.C. and his wife had been to and fro constantly winter as well as summer. Miss Ashington--commonly called "Auntie A.", as her name was Adelaide Ashington--had been in residence nearly always. She was Lady Shard's sister, and a person positively made up of schemes--which never seemed to come off, and were, as a rule, dropped in favour of something more arresting. At present, the farming problem was her hobby, and she was full of an idea for milking cows once a day at eleven o'clock in the morning, so that land-girls need not get up so early, and farmers could do with less labour. The trouble, though, seemed to be that the cows would not agree to this excellent plan. However, Auntie A. did not despair of bringing them also to a sense of duty, and meanwhile she stayed at Crown Hill doing no one any harm, which was something to be thankful for.
It appeared then a settled question that the Shards would not come to Bell Bay until summer was well nigh through. Penberthy would no longer be available, and the lovely yacht would be on her moorings--useless to the Romilly party. It certainly was a sorrowful outlook for Adrian. As Christobel said afterwards to Pamela: "If Addie had never been able to use the yawl almost like his own it wouldn't have mattered." But he had; and of course nothing could make up for it.
Pamela thought that week-end was one of the most dismal she had ever spent. Indeed it was so gloomy that she forgot about the motor-car mystery and surprising visit of Sir Marmaduke; all her mind and efforts--hers and Crow's--were spent in trying to devise a new and interesting way of passing time. Mrs. Romilly was willing to fall in with any plan, even to the extent of hiring a sailing-boat of a size suitable. She was ready to suppress her own feelings in the matter--they would have been distinctly anxious--and let Adrian go to Salterne and find something; an open boat with a sail.