“But, Derry, I have a note written, and ready for the post. I can’t explain now——”
“Put the note in your pocket, and deal with the new situation at leisure. There’s only one thing I regret——”
“Regret! Oh, Derry, what is it?” And again the shadow of fear darkened her eyes, eyes of that rare tint of Asiatic blue known as blende Kagoul, a blue darker at times than any other, and again, bright, dazzling, full of promise, rivaling the clear sky on a summer’s night.
“That I dare not take you in my arms and kiss you,” he said. “You look uncommonly pretty in that negligée wrap.”
She blushed, and put up a hand to reassure herself lest her hair might be tumbling out of its coils. Then she ran to the screen doors and pushed them apart.
“I can’t wait another second,” she said. “Please send that cab. Our own men will hardly be at the stables yet.”
She waved a hand and vanished. Her hurried orders to the domestics came in the natural sequence of things, and caused no surprise. When she drove away from the house at twenty minutes of seven every member of her establishment believed that Mrs. Marten had gone to join her father in New York, but, for some reason communicated by her “cousin,” was traveling by the first train of the day instead of the second. The only perplexed person left in “The Breakers” was Julie, the French maid, who thought she would find a holiday in Newport dull, and was, moreover, genuinely concerned because of the scanty wardrobe which her mistress had taken.
Oddly enough, Power, waiting with stoic anxiety outside the New York, New Haven & Hartford station, shared some part of Julie’s thought when he saw Nancy’s two small steamer trunks and a hatbox.
“Well!” he cried, helping her to alight. “Here have I been worrying about the capacity of the cab to hold your baggage, and you bring less than I!”
“Pay the man,” she said quietly. Then, under cover of the approach of a porter with a creaking barrow, she added, “I am coming to you penniless and plainly clad as ever was Nancy Willard. You wish that, don’t you?”