“Betty, you—you don’t know a little child named—er—‘Maggie’; do you?” she asked.
“Ma’am?” Betty almost dropped the vase she was dusting.
“‘Maggie,’—a little girl named ‘Maggie.’ She’s one of the—the mill people’s children, I think.”
Betty drew herself erect.
“No, Miss, I don’t,” she said crisply.
“No, of course not,” murmured Miss Kendall, unconsciously acknowledging the reproach in Betty’s voice. Then she turned and went out the wide hall door.
Twice she walked from end to end of the long veranda, but not once did she look toward the mills; and when she sat down a little later, her chair was so placed that it did not command a view of the red and brown roofs of the town.
Miss Kendall was restless that day. She rode and drove and sang and played, and won at golf and tennis; but behind it all was a feverish gayety that came sometimes perilously near to recklessness. Frank Spencer and his sister watched her with troubled eyes, and even Ned gave an anxious frown once or twice. Just before dinner Brandon came upon her alone in the music room where she was racing her fingers through the runs and trills of an impromptu at an almost impossible speed.
“If you take me motoring with you to-night, Miss Kendall,” he said whimsically, when the music had ceased with a crashing chord, “if you take me to-night, I shall make sure that the brakes are on my side of the car!”
The girl laughed, then grew suddenly grave.