At the station she found one of the Drover motors, and remembered with a start that it was a Saturday, and that she would probably come upon a large house-party at her sister-in-law’s. But to her relief she learned that the motor had only brought a departing visitor to the up-train. She asked to be driven back in it, and in a few moments was rolling between the wrought-iron gates and down the long drive to the house. The front door stood open, and she went into the hall. The long oak tables were so laden with golf-sticks, tennis racquets and homespun garments that she saw she had been right in guessing she would encounter a houseful. But it was too late to turn back; and besides, what did the other people matter? They might, if they were numerous enough, make it easier for her to isolate herself with Anne.
The hall seemed empty; but as she advanced she saw a woman’s figure lazily outstretched in a deep armchair before the fire. Lilla Maclew rose from the chair to greet her.
“Hallo—Aunt Kate?” Mrs. Clephane caught the embarrassment in her niece’s rich careless voice, and guessed that the family had already been made aware of the situation existing between Anne and Anne’s mother, and probably, therefore, of the girl’s engagement. But Lilla Maclew was even more easy, self-confident and indifferent than Lilla Gates had been. The bolder dash of peroxyde on her hair, and the glint of jewels on her dusky skin, made her look like a tall bronze statue with traces of gilding on it.
“Hallo,” she repeated, rather blankly; “have you come to lunch?”
“I’ve come to see Anne,” Anne’s mother answered.
Lilla’s constraint visibly increased, and with it her sullen reluctance to make any unnecessary effort. One hadn’t married money, her tone proclaimed, to be loaded up like this with family bothers.
“Anne’s out. She’s gone off with Nollie to a tennis match or something. I’m just down; we played bridge till nearly daylight, and I haven’t seen anybody this morning. I suppose mother must be somewhere about.”
She glanced irritably around her, as if her look ought to have been potent enough to summon her mother to the spot; and apparently it was, for a door opened, and Mrs. Drover appeared.
“Kate! I didn’t know you were here! How did you come?” Her hostess’s mild countenance betrayed the same embarrassment as Lilla’s, and under it Mrs. Clephane detected the same aggrieved surprise. Having at last settled her own daughter’s difficulties, Mrs. Drover’s eyes seemed to ask, why should she so soon be called upon to deal with another family disturbance? Even juries, after a protracted trial, are excused from service for seven years; yet here she was being drawn into the thick of a new quarrel when the old one was barely composed.
“Anne’s out,” she added, offering a cool pink cheek to her sister-in-law.