The long, graceful lines of the Garden car could not surmount the gloom on the faces of all its passengers, save one, on the way to the station to meet Lord Kelmscourt. It was a car of a make that always suggests pleasure, its lines are so sweeping, so elegant. But to-day it looked as though it bore three youthful chief mourners. Jane still sullenly unhappy, Florimel gloomy and angry, Mary so intent upon making the best of it that her form of melancholy was the most depressing of all.
Mrs. Garden seemed to see nothing of all this; she chattered and laughed, and was animatedly blithe, gowned in her most becoming way, her hat and its plumes so shading her face that she looked more than ever her daughters’ eldest sister.
In spite of their disposition to regard Lord Wilfrid as their natural enemy, the Garden girls could not help admitting to themselves that he had an attractive face and air as he came briskly down the platform, carrying his own bag, and smiling a welcome to his waiting escort, though they were not minded to welcome him.
Mrs. Garden received him with pretty cordiality and Mary nobly supplemented her. Jane was not able to maintain her forbidding manner in the light of this guest’s frank pleasure at seeing her again and finding her driving the big car, in which art he had given her the first lesson. Florimel thawed a little, also, in this warmer air, compelled additionally by the laws of hospitality. So they drove homeward under an invisible, but, to Mrs. Garden, a perceptible, flag of truce.
“Mrs. Garden wrote me of your splendid courage, Miss Garden, and of its cruel result. My word, but you’re a plucky girl! I’m no end glad you’ve come through so well. I was greatly distressed while they were all fearful you mightn’t get off with suffering for a time, I assure you,” Lord Kelmscourt said.
“Thank you, Lord Kelmscourt,” Mary replied. “It was not pluck that made me try to help that baby; it was seeing her afire. No one could have kept away from her. I am deeply thankful that I was not seriously harmed.”
“So he knew when I was so ill; madrina wrote him of her trouble,” Mary thought, as she answered him, and, glancing toward Jane, she saw that Jane was making mental note of this fact also.
There was a fire on the hearth that night, not needed, but delightful to sit before after the excellent little dinner, which Anne provided, had been enjoyed. Win had not been under constraint in welcoming Lord Kelmscourt; there were no reservations in his mind when he told him, truthfully, how glad he was to see him again.
“There’s the telephone! Excuse me, madrina, please,” said Mary, rising to get the message. “Oh, Mrs. Moulton!” they heard her in the hall, saying into the receiver, as innocently as if this call had not been prearranged between herself and her guardian’s wife. “Why, yes, I think we can go for a while. Lord Kelmscourt is here. All of us? Jane, Florimel, Win? I’ll tell them, Mrs. Moulton. We’ll be there right away if mother doesn’t mind. Good-bye.” Machiavellian Mary hung up the receiver and returned to the group by the library fireside, innocent and sweet.
“Madrina, Mrs. Moulton asks if we may all go over to her for a short time. Will you mind? Will Lord Kelmscourt mind if ‘the children’ run away to play for an hour or so?” Mary asked, with a great effort to keep her manner unconscious at the last words, but feeling a look of guilt creep into her eyes.