She staggered to her feet, holding it tight, but she wouldn’t put it back on her finger. She knotted it into her wet handkerchief and thrust it into her bosom. Then, blindly, weeping and shaken and dripping, she made her way back to the waiting taxi.
XXVI
Colonel Denbigh was pleasantly detained at the club luncheon. He went home in a taxi late in the afternoon, only about half an hour before his own dinner-time. Plato met him in the hall.
“Miss Jinny ain’t eaten no lunch, no suh, an’ now she’s up in her room. She say she’s got headache, an’ not to wait dinner.”
The colonel deposited his broad-brimmed hat on the table.
“Anybody been here to see me to-day, Plato?”
The old negro shook his head.
“No, suh. Mist’ Wilyum Carter, he came in to see Miss Jinny, but he’s gone ’bout two hours ago.”
A strange expression flitted across the colonel’s face, but he did not show it to his faithful factotum.
“Serve dinner on time, Plato,” he said gravely. “I don’t expect company—lunched in town with Judge Jessup and Mr. Payson.”