"Telegrams to your friends? Surely they might have waited until a more suitable time! You have caused me great anxiety——"
"I'm sorry if I worried you, Mr. North." Her tone was chastened, but there was an undernote of warning. "I've been free so long that I kind of forget I'm under extradition."
A wave of contrition swept over his ill-humor as her slim-clad figure preceded him out to the waiting motor. She had been coolly insubordinate, of course, but she was young and very much alone in a strange environment. She could be led, perhaps, but she would never be driven.
Cesare, the Halsteads' chauffeur, touched the brim of his cap smartly, and Willa bestowed upon him a dazzling smile. Only the snap of the limousine door prevented her shaking hands.
"He looks like a right-nice boy," she remarked naïvely. "Do you suppose he'll teach me how to drive a car of my own?"
"If he is told to do so," Mr. North replied with dignity, "and it is decided that you are to have a car."
She darted an appraising glance at him, but he vaguely felt a certain ambiguous quality in the silence which followed, and congratulated himself that they had reached their journey's end.
Mrs. Ripley Halstead awaited them in the drawing-room. She was a tall, commanding woman in the indefinite forties, with a high, thin nose and cold, slightly protruding eyes. Her dark hair, still untouched by gray, was arranged in a modishly severe fashion and her smile extended no farther than her straight lips.
"So this is our little cousin?" She brushed the girl's cheek with a light kiss. "My dear Willa, words cannot express our pleasure that you have been found at last, we have doubted and feared for so long. I hope that you will be very happy here with us, and I am sure that we shall all manage famously."
"Thank you," Willa murmured, through stiffened lips. "This situation has been kind of thrust on both of us, but I reckon we can make the best of it."