“He’s had more than that,” she said gaily. “Mr. Tor-marin and I had already met before—at Montavan.”
“At Montavan?” Lady Anne gave vent to an ejaculation of amused impatience. “If we had only known! Blaise could have accompanied you back and saved you all the bothersome details of the journey. But we had no idea where he was. He went off in his usual way”—smiling a shade ruefully—“merely condescending to inform his yearning family that he was going abroad for a few weeks.” Then, as Tormarin, having surrendered the car to a chauffeur, joined the group in the hall, she turned to him and continued with a faint note of expostulation in her voice: “You never told us you had already met Miss Peterson, Blaise.”
“I didn’t know it myself till I found her marooned on the platform at Coombe Eavie,” he returned. His eyes, meeting Jean’s, flickered with brief amusement as he added nonchalantly: “I did not catch Miss Peterson’s name when we met at Montavan.”
“No, we were not formally introduced,” supplemented Jean. “But Mr. Tormarin was obliging enough to pull me out of an eight-foot deep snowdrift up in the mountains, so we allowed that to count instead.”
“What luck!” exclaimed Nick with fervour.
“Yes, it was rather,” agreed Jean. “To be smothered in a snowdrift isn’t exactly the form of extinction I should choose.”
“Oh, I meant luck for Blaise,” explained Nick. “Opportunities of playing knight-errant are few and far between nowadays”—regretfully.
They all laughed, and then Lady Anne carried Jean off upstairs.
Here she found that a charming bedroom, with a sitting-room connecting, had been allotted her—“so that you’ll have a den of your own to take refuge in when you’re tired of us,” as Lady Anne explained.
Jean felt touched by the kindly thought. It takes the understanding hostess to admit frankly that a guest may sometimes crave for the solitude of her own company—and to see that she can get it.