“I am quite free,” she said, “and delighted to see you. Did you come down on your bicycle?”
“No,” said Miss Clara, “I did not feel up to my bicycle,” and Jeannie noticed that her hands were trembling.
“Do sit down,” she said, gently. “And there is no hurry. Have some coffee? No? Tell me what it is then, just when you feel inclined.”
There was a bitter tension about the corners of poor Miss Clara’s mouth, and twice she tried to speak, but was unable.
“Phœbe,” she began at length, “Phœbe has been very unkind to me, Miss Avesham. And I felt—I felt I could not rest without telling you about it. It was my fault, she said, that—Oh, dear me, dear me!”
And Miss Clifford gasped once or twice, like a person coming up after a long dive, and burst into tears.
In a moment Jeannie was by her.
“Oh, my poor, dear thing!” she said; “please don’t cry. You are upset about something, and speaking makes it worse. Let’s get up and walk quietly to and fro a little, and then if you feel better and still want to tell me, you shall, and if not—why, just don’t tell me. I am sure it is nothing bad, and, whatever it is, remember I forgive you, if it in any way concerns me.”
Miss Clifford tied her face into a series of hard knots, and put on a series of expressions so widely different from each other that she could have made her fortune as an impersonator at a music-hall if any of them had resembled any one else, but they were all of them unique.
In a few minutes, however, she recovered.