“Glad to see you, of course,” he remarked, very frigidly, “but we are, er—very busy, don’t you know—so much doing in our set at present.”
Marion ate lunch with her relations before she told her story. She felt that she must fortify herself against what was probably coming.
When the servant had cleared away the things, she began talking quietly. She was determined to lose no time in enlisting her uncle’s sympathy.
“What! Dolly abducted, and here in New York?”
“You were sent to the apartments of a bachelor—alone!”
“Stayed all night at a cheap hotel with a—a man’s housekeeper, did you say?”
These exclamations of dismay interrupted Marion’s narrative.
“There—now I have told you all, uncle!” cried Marion, as she finished. “I have told you the whole truth, and I must rely upon your kindness! I should not have dreamed of coming to you had not Dollie’s own father disavowed her.”
“And quite right of him, I say!” almost screamed her Aunt Susan, who had supplied herself with smelling salts before Marion’s story was half over.
“And you expect me, a society leader, to mix myself up in this affair! Why, the thing is disgraceful! It will all be in the papers!”