Heretofore she had obstinately rejected the olive branch held out by Sue. Sue, acting as mouthpiece for the three, had written time and again, begging that for all their sakes no estrangement should take place; entreating the delinquents to believe that they would only meet with kindness and affection in Eaton Place, where the sisters were established, and where room was plentiful. Would not Val and Maud come and make their home also there for the present?
But though the offer, delicately worded, might have been presumed tempting enough to two almost penniless people, it was coldly declined.
"And she seems as if she were angry with us!" cried Sybil, "she who dragged the whole family through the mud, and left us to bear the brunt!"
"Certainly she does write as if she bore us a grudge," owned Sue, "and yet, how can she? What have we done? What has any one of us done that Maud should refuse to be one with us again? I am sorry, but of course if that is the spirit in which poor Maud receives overtures of peace, I really—really I do not think I can go on thrusting them upon her." For Sue also had her pride, though it was a poor, weak, back-boneless pride, which would have melted at the first soft word from her sister.
The emigration concocted in the club window, however, effected what all besides had failed to do. By the time the final arrangements were complete and the tickets taken, Maud, on the eve of departure, was won upon to come to Eaton Place, though she still declined to take up her abode there.
Nor would she come alone.
"Val's with her," announced Sybil, having peeped from the balcony; "she might have left him behind, I think. I did want to find out if I could, what Maud really means by all this? Why we are in disgrace, because she has behaved like an idiot?"
"We shall never discover that now;" said Sue,—and the event proved her right.
Maud had taken the best and surest precaution against conversation of an intimate nature. She had put on one of the smartest dresses of her elaborate trousseau—having left it unpacked on purpose,—and her step as she entered was that of a stranger on a foreign soil. She was studiously polite; she inquired with a becoming air of solicitude after their healths, and she looked kindly at Sue:—but a jest of Sybil's fell flat, and Leo was conscious that her sister's lips never actually touched her cheek.
Leo herself was trembling from head to foot.