‘As if Mr. Wellfield cared anything about bonnets!’ said Nita, sharply. ‘Can’t you see when you are being laughed at, aunt?’
‘Nita!’ ejaculated Miss Shuttleworth, in a tone of the utmost pain and astonishment.
But Nita was already on her way out of the shop. Jerome spoke to Miss Shuttleworth:
‘Miss Bolton is upset,’ he said. ‘We have had a serious accident, and only just escaped with our lives. She is unnerved.’
‘I don’t understand it at all,’ said Aunt Margaret, all her pugnacity gone, and looking as she felt, perfectly bewildered.
‘I am sure Miss Bolton will explain later,’ he continued. Miss Shuttleworth looked at him, as if wondering who and what he was that he should thus take upon himself to make explanations; but with a stiff ‘Good-afternoon,’ she went out at the door, and he followed her.
Nita saw her, and asked if she would not drive home with them. Miss Shuttleworth was on the point of refusing with decision and asperity, but something in her so-called ‘niece’s’ look caught her observant eye—a weariness, a whiteness, a languor. She said:
‘I don’t mind if I do. That’s to say, if you leave me in peace to the back seat, for I hate the front one unless I know the driver.’
‘Sit where you like, aunt,’ was the reply, as Jerome came forward and offered his help.
But Miss Shuttleworth refused, and unaided clambered up to the back seat, presenting a liberal allowance of very spare leg and white cotton stocking to the enraptured view of Miss Bamford’s young ladies, who, from the work-room on the second floor, were gazing down upon the proceedings with the intensest interest, and speculating with a burning curiosity as to who that gentleman could be who had driven up with Miss Anita Bolton of the Abbey; who handed her into the phaeton with such assiduous care, and bent over her with such a look of attention as he spoke a word to her before driving off.