Eleanor covered her face with her hands—and Mrs. Newbolt burst out, "He's treated you badly! You needn't try to deceive me,—he's been flirtin' with some woman?" Her pale, prominent eyes snapped with anger.
"Oh, Auntie, don't! He hasn't! Only, I—wanted to make him happier; and so I—" She broke into furious crying. Despairing crying.
Instantly Mrs. Newbolt was all frightened solicitude. "There! Don't cry! Have a hot-water bag. They say there's a new kind on the market. I must get a new pair of rubbers. Your face is awfully bruised. He's puffectly happy! He worships the ground you walk on! Eleanor, don't cry. How's your cold? The ashman—"
Eleanor, gasping, said her cold was better, and repeated her determination of going home.
It was the doctor—dropping in, he said, to make sure Mrs. Curtis was none the worse for her "accident"—who put a stop to that.
"I slipped and fell," Eleanor told him; she was very hoarse.
He said yes, he understood. "But you got badly chilled, and you had a cold to start with. So you must lie low for two or three days. When will Mr. Curtis be back?"
Eleanor said she didn't know; all she knew was she didn't want him sent for. She was "all right."
But of course he had been sent for! "I don't know that it was really necessary," Mrs. Newbolt told Mrs. Houghton, who appeared late in the afternoon; "but I wasn't goin' to take the responsibility—"
"Of course not!" Mrs. Houghton said. "Mr. Weston has telegraphed him, too, I hope?" Then, before taking her things off, she went upstairs to Eleanor. "Well!" she said, "I hear you had an accident? Sensible girl, to stay in bed!" She took Eleanor's hand, and its hot tremor made her look keenly at the haggard face on the pillow.