"Yes, here we are at last," echoed Madeleine, abstractedly, warming her slender ankles by the fire.
"Have you made out yet what particular kind of new frenzy it was that seized chère Tante?" asked Miss Molly, with great emphasis, as she sat down at her toilet-table. "You are the cause of it all, my dear, and so you ought to know. It is all very well for Tanty to pretend that I have brought it on myself by not coming home till three o'clock (as if that was my fault). She cannot blink the fact that her Dempsey creature had orders to pack my boxes before bedtime. Your Smith must be a desperately dangerous individual. Well," she continued, looking round over her shoulder, "why don't you say something, you lackadaisical thing?"
But Madeleine answered nought and continued gazing, while only the little smile, tilting the corners of her lips, betrayed that she had heard the petulant speech.
The smile put the finishing touch to Molly's righteous anger. Brandishing a hairbrush threateningly, she marched over to her sister and looked down upon the slender figure, in its clinging white dress, with blazing eyes.
"Look here," she cried, "there must be an end of this. I can put up with your slyness no longer. How dare you have secrets from me, miss?—your own twin sister! You and I, who used never to have a thought we did not share. How dare you have a lover, and not tell me all about him? What was the meaning of your weeping like a fountain all the way from Bath to Shrewsbury, and then, without rhyme or reason apparently, smiling to yourself all the way from there to Lancaster. You have had a letter, don't attempt to deny it, it is of no use.... Oh, it is base of you, it is indeed! And to think that it is all through you that I am forced into this exile, through your airs penchés, and your sighing and dreaming, and your mysterous Smith.... To think that to-night, this very night, is the ball of the season, and we are going to bed! Oh, and to-morrow and to-morrow, and to-morrow, with nothing but a knave and a fool to keep us company—for I don't think much of your female cousin, Madeleine, and, as for your male cousin, I perfectly detest him—and all the tabbies of the country-side for diversion, with perhaps a country buck on high days and holidays for a relish! Pah!"
Molly had almost talked her ill-humour away. Her energetic nature could throw off most unpleasant emotions easily enough so long as it might have an outlet for them; she now laid down the threatening brush, and, kneeling beside her, flung both her arms round Madeleine's shoulders.
"Ma petite Madeleine," she coaxed, in the mother tongue, "tell thy little sister thy secrets."
A faint flush crept to Madeleine's usually creamy cheeks, a light into her eyes. She turned impulsively to the face near hers, then, as if bethinking herself, pursed her lips together and shook her head slightly.
"Do you remember, ma chèrie," she said, at last, "that French tale Mrs. Hambledon lent us in which it is said 'Qui fuit l'amour, l'amour suit.'"
"Well?" asked Molly, eagerly, her lips parted as if to drink in the expected confidence.