Chapter VII
MISS PELLISSIER’S SUSPICIONS
“Anna!”
Anna kissed her sister and nodded to her aunt. Then she sat down—uninvited—and looked from one to the other curiously. There was something about their greeting and the tone of Annabel’s exclamation which puzzled her.
“I wish,” she said, “that you would leave off looking at me as though I were something grisly. I am your very dutiful niece, aunt, and your most devoted sister, Annabel. I haven’t murdered any one, or broken the law in any way that I know of. Perhaps you will explain the state of panic into which I seem to have thrown you.”
Annabel, who was looking very well, and who was most becomingly dressed, moved to a seat from which she could command a view of the road outside. She was the first to recover herself. Her aunt, a faded, anæmic-looking lady of somewhat too obtrusive gentility, was still sitting with her hand pressed to her heart.
Annabel looked up and down the empty street, and then turned to her sister.
“For one thing, Anna,” she remarked, “we had not the slightest idea that you had left, or were leaving Paris. You did not say a word about it last week, nor have you written. It is quite a descent from the clouds, isn’t it?”