"Two men?" repeated Fanny. "Did you know they were coming?"
"Ask them," snorted Mrs. Carew. "And what I said is——"
"Oh, run away, Carew," Fanny broke in, "with your nasty suspicion. It's all my bad example, you'll be saying next. Bring up some tea for me, there's an old dear; I'm fairly parched for a drink."
But before she went into her own room Fanny ran upstairs and knocked softly oh Joan's door. There was no answer and no sound from within the room; yet when she tried turning the handle, and pushing her foot against the door, it was to find it locked. What did it all mean? Two men to tea, Dick's face as he had passed through the hall, and Joan's locked door? That was a problem which Fanny set herself to disentangle in her own particular way.
CHAPTER XXVI
| "Of all strange things in this strange new world Most strange is this; Ever my lips must speak and smile Without your kiss. Ever mine eyes must see, despite Those eyes they miss." |
F. Heaslip Lee.
How Joan lived through the hours that followed she never knew. Heart and brain seemed paralysed; things had lost their power to hurt. When Fanny crept upstairs in the early morning and knocked timidly at the door, Joan opened it to her. She had no wish to see Fanny; she did not want to talk about yesterday, or explain what had happened; but vaguely through her absolute misery she realized that life had still to be gone on with, and that Fanny was one of the items of life which it was no use trying to disregard. As a matter of fact, until she opened the door and caught Fanny's look of dismay, she did not remember that she was still in her black afternoon frock, nor the fact that she had spent most of the night crouched against the door as Dick had left her.
"Oh, my dear, my dear!" Fanny whispered; she came quickly into the room and threw warm, loving arms round Joan. "You haven't been to bed at all; why didn't you let me in last night? I'd have helped you somehow or other."