"But, Alfred, I promised," faltered Hester.
"Then you must just wriggle out if it, my dear. Write to Mrs. Fellowes and say we've too many engagements here—can't find any spare day. She's a sensible woman, she'll read between the lines. Rupees ain't so plentiful with her."
"Yet just think what she does," said Hester with dilating eyes. "Her purse is always open! But, Alfred, I'm really in honour bound to carry through this treat. It's too late to draw back now, you would never ask me do such a thing."
"To draw back? Of course, that's precisely what you must do! It's an absurd project! I'll be bound, it wasn't for that sort of thing Binny's Bungalow was lent to Mrs. Fellowes!" said Mr. Rayner, rising as if to end the discussion.
"It's too late to draw back now," returned Hester decisively. "I happened to meet two of the Vepery girls as I was driving home. I stopped the carriage to tell them of the happy day Mrs. Fellowes was planning for them——"
"Vepery, did you say?" asked Alfred, turning with a start. "I understood your class was at Royapooram."
Though he had tacitly acquiesced in his wife's helping her friend in what he called her "quixotic projects," he had taken no further interest. It disturbed him not a little now to know that the meeting might contain, his objectionable acquaintance, Leila Baltus, and sheer alarm drove him to more indignant remonstrances than before. At length he summoned his office-bandy, and at that unwonted hour ordered the sleepy syce to light the lamps, and drove off to town, leaving his wife in tears.
Hester, sorely vexed as she was, never for a moment contemplated abandoning the project which she decided she was in duty bound to Mrs. Fellowes, as well as to the Club girls, to carry out. Hurrying up-stairs she counted her own little store which she had laid aside for Christmas presents for those at home. It proved more than the required sum.
When her landau appeared next forenoon to take her for a round of visits, she told the syce to drive her instead to Waller's Stables, where the hire of the required carriages was speedily arranged. She resolved to tell her husband on the first opportunity that the carriage difficulty was now solved, and to try, when she did so, to hide the soreness which still rankled in her heart concerning it.
There was an air of apology in Mr. Rayner's manner when he returned from the High Court that afternoon. He evidently did not forget that he had lost his temper on the previous evening, and his wife hoped this state of mind might make it easier for her to broach the vexed question.