When she arrived breathless at the top of the house, Katharine was already in her cubicle, turning everything over in a wild and fruitless search.
"Go away!" she said shortly, when Phyllis came in. "It was the only thing I asked you to do, and I thought I could trust you. I shall know better another time. What are all these things doing here?"
She knocked her head, as she spoke, against a string of Chinese lanterns. There were flowers on the mantel-shelf, and a look of festivity in the dingy little room; but it was all lost on Katharine, who continued to open and shut the drawers with trembling hands, and to search in every likely place for her letter, until Phyllis put an end to her aimless task by bringing it to her in eloquent silence. Then she stole away again; and Katharine sat down in the midst of the confusion she had created, and became absorbed in its contents. It was very short, and there was hardly any news in it that could not have been extracted from a guide-book; but she spent quite half an hour in reading it and pondering over it, until she knew every one of its stilted phrases by heart. He was very well and it was very hot, and he was sitting by the open window looking down on the orange groves, and the sea was a splendid colour, and there were some very decent people in the hotel, and amongst them her relations the Keeleys. It was hard to look up at last, with dazed eyes, and to discover that she was in Queen's Crescent, Marylebone, instead of being where her thoughts were, in the sunny South of France.
"Hullo," said Phyllis, who was standing at the end of the bed.
"Yes?" said Katharine, smiling. "Do you want anything?"
"Oh, no," said Phyllis, and crept away again. Katharine sat and pondered a little while longer. Presently, she shivered and made the discovery that she was cold, and she jumped up and stretched herself.
"I suppose I must unpack," she said, still smiling contentedly. "Where has Phyllis gone, I wonder?"
She went to the door and made the passage ring with her voice, until Phyllis hurried out of a neighbouring room and apologised for not being there when she was wanted.
"I believe you were there when I didn't want you," said Katharine candidly. "Wasn't I cross to you or something?" Her foot touched one of the discarded Chinese lanterns.
"Hullo! I thought there were some lanterns somewhere. Where are they gone?"