"He told me,"—Grindley's slow voice sounded, his eyes seemed to find vacancy where another's would have found Sir William's door—"he told me he didn't want to make it any worse for you than necessary!"
"Ah!" Something like life returned to the dead eyes. "Any worse, he means, for himself."
Napier turned away in disgust.
"Your seat in the Pullman," said Singleton politely, "is Number Sixteen."
"You don't m-mean they will let me go—home!"
"Yes; that's the kind of fools we are."
As the voice Napier's ears were straining for called out, "Greta!" Nan came up the steps, leaning forward, as she ran, to see into the hall. "Is that you, Gre—" She hung a second, framed there in the doorway, with Madge behind her. "What is it, dearest?" She flew to the figure on the chair. She kneeled beside it. "Greta darling, you've had bad news. Oh, what is it, my dear?" She chafed the slack hand. She laid it against her cheek. "Tell me, somebody!" she said, looking at Napier. "Who are these strangers?"
By a heroic effort, Miss von Schwarzenberg produced a masterpiece. "They—they are friends of mine," she said.
Singleton, after a faint smiling inclination in Miss Ellis's direction, as though accepting the audacious description as an introduction, made it good by saying to Miss von Schwarzenberg: "You understand then, you're not to give yourself any trouble about tickets or accommodation. We will see to all that, won't we, Grindley?"
Grindley made a consenting rumble in his throat, and withdrew with Singleton to the front steps. They stood there conferring.