“I had expected to find your mother here,” he said.
“It was a bitter afternoon, and I persuaded her to stay at home.”
The man took a pink envelope out of his pocket, and handed it her.
“I passed the post-office lad walking his bicycle over a very soft piece of road, and pulled up to ask if he had anything for me,” he said. “When I found he had only a telegram for your mother I offered to bring it on, and he seemed quite willing to let me. The vicar hasn’t turned up yet, Hester?”
“No,” said Hester. “I am expecting him.”
Earle went out, and Hester proceeded with the account of a recent dance which she had been engaged in when he came in, while Violet turned over the telegram.
“It will be from Lily Cochrane to tell us she is coming, and I think I’ll open it,” she said.
Hester nodded. “Ada Whittingham in green—there are people who really have no sense of fitness,” she said. “The effect was positively startling.”
Violet tore open the envelope, and gasped, while the words she read grew blurred before her eyes. For a moment or two she could scarcely grasp their meaning, and sat staring at the message, and trying vainly to read it again. The branch of a trailer rose rapped upon the window as it swayed in the moaning wind, and Hester ran on.
“Lottie had out her diamonds, the whole of them—somewhat defective taste considering the character of the affair. Mrs. Pechereau was there with Muriel in a black gown I’ve seen already—one would never fancy she was that girl’s mother.”