Napier waited on thorns to get a word with Nan. Was it impossible, was it too late, to put her on her guard? She seemed to have no eyes for any one but Greta. If Singleton had doubted the closeness of her relation to that notorious character, what must he think now?
"Try to tell me, dearest, what has happened." Nan hung over the slack form.
"Are you going somewhere, Miss Greta?" Madge pressed to the other side of the chair. "Where are you going?"
"And why?" Nan urged with a sharpness of concern. "You've had bad news, my dearest, dearest."
"Yes." Greta remembered the telegram. She took the message out and half opened it. The paper was now folded in halves, instead of in quarters. Nan watched eagerly the fingers, which seemed to forget to open the telegram to her friend's eye.
"Poor father!" Miss Greta brought out the words in a tone so exquisitely gentle that Napier studied her face an instant.
He was sure that, as she sat there with that look of sorrow, absently tearing the telegram across, she was thinking lucidly and rapidly what her next move should be.
"Is it that your father is ill, dear?" Nan pressed closer to her side.
Greta nodded. Speechless with emotion, she tore the facing halves of the telegram to ribbons, the ribbons to fragments, all with the air, as it struck Napier, of the fille noble of the theater.
"Dear, I'm terribly sorry!" Nan took her hand. "But you mustn't think it is as serious as all that. Unless—what did it say?"