“Come in.”
“Hullo!” cried Peter in buoyant voice.
Merle, doing nothing in particular, was standing at the dressing-table, heaped high with dainty expensive presents, and notes, and telegrams; tokens whereby might be gathered that Mademoiselle des Essarts was twenty-two.
Mademoiselle des Essarts did not return her friend’s greeting.
“Hullo!” The repetition in a somewhat more subdued tone.
“Did Stuart catch the train?”
“How did you know?” Peter queried, astonished.
“I heard him tell the driver to hurry, the instant he had deposited me on my doorstep. ‘Drive like Hell!’ was his exact expression, I think.”
“Yes ... he just turned up in time;” a distinctly subdued voice now. There was something ominous about Merle’s lovely little face; and Peter was not quite so sure about keeping the two-world intact.