“Come in,” she said.
And then, when he stepped into the beamed living-room, and saw the peasant girl grinning at him sympathetically from the background, he could not doubt that he had been made the victim of a most pleasant little plot between the two young women.
“This,” said Miss Eden, leading him across the stone-flagged floor, with its neat strips of home-made carpet, to a wooden armchair, where an old woman in an all-round white cap sat knitting by the fire, “is M. Bayre’s nephew, Madame Portelet.”
The old woman gave him a smileless but not uncordial welcome, speaking in the muffled tones of the deaf. And then Miss Eden turned to the young girl.
“It was Nini here who led you into this trap, by my command, Mr Bayre.” Nini dropped a curtsey. “When she saw you in the town this morning she came back and reported the fact. And then she went back and decoyed you here.”
Bayre was bewildered. Into all the delight he felt at finding Miss Eden safe and sound there would obtrude the pain of the mystery which surrounded not only her but his uncle and the unidentified baby. He began to feel, too, that he should never have the courage to ask all the questions he would have liked to have answered.
Miss Eden, indeed, led the talk as she liked. He fell instinctively into the position of her adoring humble servant, and accepted the tea she made for him, and the bread-and-butter which she cut with her own hands, without anticipating by so much as a word the moment when she would choose to enlighten him as to her strange position.
The time came at last. Nini had disappeared with the tea-tray into the back regions of the farmhouse, and Miss Eden led him to the window and sat down, while he stood leaning against the opposite end of the deep window-seat.
“You are surprised to see me here,” she said.
“I—I was only too delighted to s-s-see you anywhere,” stammered he. “When they told me you had disappeared, I—I—”