They walked, the three of them, across to the porte-cochère.
Nancy Dampier was now sitting crouched up in a corner of the fiacre; a handkerchief was pressed to her face, and she was trying, not very successfully, to stifle her sobs of nervous fear and distress.
With an eager, impulsive gesture the American girl leapt up the step of the little open carriage. "Don't cry," she whispered soothingly. "It will all come right soon! Why, I expect your husband just went out to see a friend and got kept somehow. If it wasn't for those stupid Poulains' mistake about last night you wouldn't feel really worried, now would you?"
Nancy dabbed her eyes. She felt ashamed of being caught crying by these kind people. "I know I'm being silly!" she gasped. "You must forgive me! It's quite true I shouldn't feel as worried as I feel now if it wasn't for the Poulains—their saying, I mean, that they've never seen my husband. That's what upset me. It all seems so strange and—and horrid. My sense tells me it's quite probable Jack has gone in to see some friend, and was kept somehow."
"And now," said Daisy Burton persuasively, "you must come upstairs with us, and we'll get Madame Poulain to send us up a nice déjeuner to our sitting-room."
And so the Senator found part of his new problem solved for him. Daisy, so much was dear, had determined to befriend—and that to the uttermost—this unfortunate young Englishwoman.
But now there arose another most disagreeable complication.
Madame Poulain had strolled out, her arms akimbo, to see what was going on. And, as if she had guessed the purport of Miss Burton's words, she walked forward, and speaking this time respectfully, even suavely, to "Monsieur le Sénateur," observed, "My husband and I regret very greatly that we cannot ask this lady to stay on in our hotel. We have no vacant room—no room at all!"
And then it was that Gerald Burton, who had stood apart from the discussion, saying nothing, simply looking intently, sympathetically at his sister and Mrs. Dampier—took a hand in the now complicated little human game.
"Father!" he exclaimed, speaking in low, sharp tones. "Of course Mrs. Dampier must stay on here with us till her husband comes back! If by some extraordinary chance he isn't back by to-night she can have my room—I shall easily find some place outside." And as his father looked at him a little doubtfully he went on:—"Will you explain to Madame Poulain what we've settled? I can't trust myself to speak to the woman! She's behaving in the most unkind, brutal way to this poor little lady."