Deborah took the glass of water from her, and sprinkled a little on Miss Laxton’s face. “Hush, ma’am! She is coming to herself! There, my dear! You are better now, are you not?”
Phoebe’s eyes opened, and stared blankly up into Miss Grantham’s face for a bewildered moment. Then, as realization came, she shuddered convulsively, and clutched at Miss Grantham’s arm. “Oh, don’t let him come in!”
“No one shall come in whom you don’t wish to see, my dear,” replied Miss Grantham calmly. “Do not agitate yours so! You are quite safe! Come, I want you to drink this hartshorn-and-water, and then you will be better!”
Miss Laxton swallowed the mixture obediently, and burst into tears. Lady Bellingham said: “For heaven’s sake, child don’t start crying! If Sir James is downstairs, I will very so send him about his business! His mother was a very vulgar low kind of a woman, so that I am sure one cannot be surprised at anything!”
Miss Grantham helped Phoebe to rise from the floor, a put her into a large armchair. “Is he downstairs, Phoebe?”
“No! Oh, no, I think not! He walked away. He will have gone to my father. I am utterly undone! What shall I do? Where can I go? I dare not stay here another minute!”
Lady Bellingham sighed, and shook her head. “I declare cannot make head or tail of what she means! I dare say shi going mad too, if we only knew, and who shall wonder at.”
Phoebe clasped Miss Grantham’s hand feebly, and said t: indeed she was not mad. “It was my fault. It was all my fault I never thought—I went into the front saloon, to watch Adrian, and I didn’t think that anyone would see me. I pulled back the blinds, to see better, and he was there!”
“Who was there? Who was where?” demanded Ls Bellingham.
“Sir James, in the Square, walking by the house in the direction of St James’s Street!”