“Does that matter to you? Go on with your story.”
Patricia jumped up.
“I think, in the circumstances, I’ll please myself what I tell you,” she said with a dangerous quietness. “It might be more to the point if you told me what you’ve done with the money entrusted to you. Six years, Aunt Agatha? That was three years after I came here. . . . You were always making trips abroad, and kept me on at school as long as you could. . . . Weren’t you in Africa six years ago? You were away a long time, I remember——”
“That will do,” said Miss Girton harshly.
“Will it?” asked the girl.
If her aunt had been tearful and frightened, Patricia would have been ready to comfort her, but weakness was not one of Miss Girton’s failings, and her aggressively impenitent manner could provoke nothing but resentment. A storm was perilously near when an interruption came in the shape of a ring at the front door. Miss Girton went to answer it, and Patricia heard in the hall the spluttering of an agitated Algy. In a moment the immaculate Mr. Lomas-Coper himself came into the drawing-room.
“Why, there you are!” he gasped fatuously, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes. “And, I say!—what? Been bird’s-nestin’ in your party frock!”
And Algy stood goggling through his monocle at the girl’s disarray.
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” she smiled, though inwardly she was cursing the arrival of another person to whom explanations would have to be made. “Aunt Agatha simply sagged when she saw me.”
“I should think so!” said Algy. “What happened to the eggs? Tell me all about it.”