Anyway, whoever it might be, he had spoken in a voice whose bidding she was ready to follow. She rose and took the few steps between the chair and the drawing-room door. But she stepped over the sill without hurry, with a meditative air. The man, standing a little way in among the tall lilac bushes, said to himself; “She’s the right stuff. Not startled or upset. Good for Kate Marshall!”
Jack Denton pounced upon her almost at once. “Where have you been?” he cried. “The salad I fought for and won for you has just been commandeered by my grandmother. Now will you agree to stay put while I dash into the fray in the dining-room again?”
“Yes, after a minute. First I must find Elsie. I have to see her very specially.”
“Elsie? Haven’t laid eyes on her for some time. Give me your message and I’ll go hunt.”
“No, but do look around for her. I will, too, and that will save time.”
Elsie was not to be found anywhere in all the rooms that were lighted and open that evening on the first floor of the house. “She’s just not down here at all, unless she’s somewhere in the servants’ wing,” Jack finally reported when they met by chance at the foot of the stairs.
Kate now went to her aunt who was having salad sitting between two dowagers, one of them Kate’s dowager. “I am looking for Elsie, Aunt Katherine,” she said. “Have you seen her recently?”
Miss Frazier shook her head. “Not for some time. I myself have been wondering what has become of her.” Miss Frazier’s dark eyes as she lifted them to Kate were clouded with worried surmise.
Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith laughed. As a laugh, it sounded a trifle unsure of itself and uneasy for a dowager person. “I had a few words with the child myself half an hour or so ago,” she volunteered. “Strangely enough, she took some offence at some remarks that were meant only kindly, and flounced off. Perhaps she is sulking somewhere about it.”
“I am sorry, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, if my niece was rude to you.” But in spite of the words Miss Frazier’s tone was not at all a sorry tone; it was rather edged. She herself had just been submitted to some remarks of Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith’s that were doubtless meant kindly, and as a consequence her sympathy was all with Elsie. But even so, if Elsie were sulking, she was undoing all that Miss Frazier’s efforts had built up in her behalf. That was a pity.