“Come in,” she said in a petulant voice.
The handle of the door was slowly turned, the tapestry curtain moved forward, and a little fair-haired girl, with an infantile expression of face, and looking years younger than her eighteen summers, tripped a few steps into the room.
“I beg your pardon, Maggie,” she said. “I had not a moment to come sooner—not one, really. That stupid Miss Turner chose to raise the alarm for the fire brigade; of course I had to go, and I’ve only just come back and changed my dress.”
“You ought to be in bed, Rosalind: it’s past eleven o’clock.”
“Oh, as if that mattered! I’ll go in a minute. How cosy you look here.”
“My dear, I am not going to keep you out of your beauty sleep. You can admire my room another time. If you have a message for me, Rosalind, let me have it, and then—oh, cruel word, but I must say it, my love—Go!”
Rosalind Merton had serene baby-blue eyes; they looked up now full at Maggie. Then her dimpled little hand slid swiftly into the pocket of her dress, came out again with a quick, little, frightened dart, and deposited a square envelope with some manly, writing on it on the bureau, where Maggie had been studying Prometheus Vinctus. The letter covered the greater portion of the open page. It seemed to Maggie as if the Greek play had suddenly faded and gone out of sight behind a curtain.
“There,” said Rosalind, “that’s for you. I was at Kingsdene to-day—and—I—I said you should have it, and I—I promised that I’d help you, Maggie. I—yes—I promised. I said I would help you, if you’d let me.”
“Thank you,” replied Miss Oliphant, in a lofty tone. The words came out of her lips with the coldness of ice. “And if I need you—I—promise—to ask your help. Where did you say you met Mr Hammond?” Maggie took up her letter, and opened it slowly. “At Spilman’s; he was buying something for his room. He—” Rosalind blushed all over her face.
Maggie took her letter out of its envelope. She looked at the first two or three words, then laid it, open as it was, on the table.