A few hours later Daphne, preceded by a rather incoherent telegram, drove up to the Rectory in the station fly.
She was met at the door by Cilly, and the two, as if by one impulse, fell into each other's arms.
"Daphne, dear Daph," murmured the impetuous Cilly, "I am the happiest girl in all the world."
"And I," said Daphne simply, "am the most miserable."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
THE COUNTERSTROKE.
The scene is the Restaurant International, a palatial house of refreshment in Regent Street; the time half-past one. At a table in the corner of the Grand Salle à Manger, set in a position calculated to extract full value from the efforts of a powerful orchestra, a waiter of majestic mien, with a powdered head, and a gold tassel on his left shoulder, stands towering over two recently arrived patrons with the menu.
The patrons, incredible as it may appear, are Stephen Blasius Vereker and Veronica Elizabeth Vereker. Stiffy, in the gala dress of a schoolboy of eighteen, is perspiring freely under the gaze of the overpowering menial at his elbow; Nicky, in a new hat of colossal but correct dimensions (the gift of her eldest sister), with her hair gathered into the usual ne plus ultra of the "flapper,"—a constricted pigtail tied with a large black bow of ribbon,—is entirely unruffled.
How they got there will appear presently.