That night Billie related the strange story to her three intimate friends in their bedroom. Each Motor Maid made her own characteristic observation.
Nancy, standing before the mirror, rolling her curls on her pretty fingers, smiled at her image and remarked:
“Mr. Ignatius Donahue is the most charming, fascinating, delightful man I ever met.”
Elinor, in a long white bath robe, her braids twisted around her small head like a coronet, observed:
“It was really family pride, I suppose, that made Edward l’Estrange’s father keep the letter a secret.”
“Oh, no, Elinor,” cried Mary, seated cross-legged on the bed, while she thoughtfully brushed her fine brown hair, “it was his love for his brother. They say that the love of one twin for another passeth understanding.”
“Whatever it was,” said Billie, lying flat on her back on the bed and gazing up at the ceiling, “a fine American boy and girl, honest and plucky and proud, too, for that matter, have come up, head and shoulders from the whole wretched muddle.”
CHAPTER XXIV.—SO ENDETH THE SECOND LESSON.
“Sit right there in a row in front of me, so that I may have a good look at you, young ladies. Now, tell me all of your names. This one I know: Mistress Elinor Butler, an American Princess. Wilhelmina Campbell? Ah, you are the brave young woman who saves people’s lives, Anne Starbuck Brown? You’re Irish, my dear, I can tell by your blue eyes and your pretty, impudent face. Mary Anastasia Price? Those eyes of yours, my child, are too earnest and serious for this wicked world.”
Mrs. Paxton-Steele had left her room this morning for the first time since the explosion, and the two Edwards, her grandsons, as like as two peas in a pod, had pushed her rolling chair down to the beach. Then she had sent her man servant scurrying back to the hotel with her compliments to the Motor Maids—and would they do her the pleasure of calling on her that morning on the sands?