Nance stared at her aghast. “Oh, Linda, my little Linda!” she whispered, “how can you say these terrible things? My only thought, all the time, is for you.”
Linda struggled feebly to her feet, refusing her sister’s help.
“I can walk,” she said, and then, with a bitterness that seemed to poison the air between them, “you needn’t be afraid of my escaping from you. He wouldn’t like me now, you’ve hurt me and made me ugly.”
Nance picked up her bundle of mud-stained clothes. The smell of the river which still clung to them gave her a sense of nausea.
“Come,” she said, “we’ll follow the park wall.”
They moved off slowly together without further speech and never did any hour, in either of their lives, pass more miserably. As they came within sight of Oakguard, Linda looked so white and exhausted that Nance was on the point of taking her boldly in and begging Mrs. Renshaw’s help, but somehow the thought of meeting Philippa just at that moment was more than she was able to endure, and they dragged on towards the village.
Emerging from the park gates and coming upon the entrance to the green, Nance became aware that it would be out of the question to make Linda walk any further and, after a second’s hesitation, she led her across the grass and under the sycamores to Baltazar’s cottage.
The door was opened by Mr. Stork himself. He started back in astonishment at the sight of their two figures pale and shivering in the wind. He led them into his sitting-room and at once proceeded to light the fire. He wrapped warm rugs round them both and made them some tea. All this he did without asking them any questions, treating the whole affair as if it were a thing of quite natural occurrence. The warmth of the fire and the pleasant taste of the epicure’s tea restored Nance, at any rate, to some degree of comfort. She explained that they had walked too far and that she had tried to cross the river to get help for her sister. Linda said hardly anything but gazed despairingly at the picture of the Ambassador’s secretary. The young Venetian seemed to answer her look and Baltazar, always avid of these occult sympathies, watched this spiritual encounter with sly amusement. He had wrapped an especially brilliant oriental rug round the younger girl and the contrast between its rich colours and the fragile beauty of the face above them struck him very pleasantly.
In his heart he shrewdly guessed that some trouble connected with Brand was at the bottom of this and the suspicion that she had been interfering with her sister’s love affair did not diminish the prejudice he had already begun to cherish against Nance. Stork was constitutionally immune from susceptibility to feminine charm and the natural little jests and gaieties with which the poor girl tried to “carry off” a sufficiently embarrassing situation only irritated him the more.