“It is through some folly of yours,” he dropped in a voice of vitriol. “Women are always foolish. They cannot hold their tongues or think clearly. Return to Berlin at once. You are not of those whose conduct I can commend to be trusted in the future.”
He was gone before she could have spoken even if she had dared. Sobbing gasps caught her breath as she stood and watched him striding pitilessly and superbly away with, what seemed to her abject soul, the swing and tread of a martial god. Her streaming tears tasted salt indeed. She might never see him again—even from a distance. She would be disgraced and flung aside as a blundering woman. She had obeyed his every word and done her straining best, as she had licked the dust at his feet—but he would never cast a glance at her in the future or utter to her the remotest word of his high commands. She so reeled as she went her wretched way that a good-natured policeman said to her as he passed,
“Steady on, my girl. Best get home and go to bed.”
To Mrs. Gareth-Lawless, it was stated by Coombe that Fräulein Hirsch had been called back to Germany by family complications. That august orders should recall Count Von Hillern, was easily understood. Such magnificent persons never shone upon society for any length of time.
That Feather had been making a country home visit when her daughter had faced tragedy was considered by Lord Coombe as a fortunate thing.
“We will not alarm Mrs. Gareth-Lawless by telling her what has occurred,” he said to Mademoiselle Vallé. “What we most desire is that no one shall suspect that the hideous thing took place. A person who was forgetful or careless might, unintentionally, let some word escape which—”
What he meant, and what Mademoiselle Vallé knew he meant—also what he knew she knew he meant—was that a woman, who was a heartless fool, without sympathy or perception, would not have the delicacy to feel that the girl must be shielded, and might actually see a sort of ghastly joke in a story of Mademoiselle Vallé’s sacrosanct charge simply walking out of her enshrining arms into such a “galere” as the most rackety and adventurous of pupils could scarcely have been led into. Such a point of view would have been quite possible for Feather—even probable, in the slightly spiteful attitude of her light mind.
“She was away from home. Only you and I and Dowie know,” answered Mademoiselle.
“Let us remain the only persons who know,” said Coombe. “Robin will say nothing.”
They both knew that. She had been feverish and ill for several days and Dowie had kept her in bed saying that she had caught cold. Neither of the two women had felt it possible to talk to her. She had lain staring with a deadly quiet fixedness straight before her, saying next to nothing. Now and then she shuddered, and once she broke into a mad, heart-broken fit of crying which she seemed unable to control.