“I’ll look a bit among the crowd, and if I find your squint-eyed damsel I’ll send her to you. I shall know her in a minute.”
Here was a good chance to explain, but Mrs. Hallam let it pass, and Rex went his way, searching here and there for a light-haired, weak-eyed woman answering to her photograph.
But he did not find her, and ran instead against Bertha, with no suspicion that she was the girl he had told his aunt to sit on, and for whom that lady waited rather impatiently after the ship was cleared.
“Oh!” she said, as Bertha came in. “I have been waiting for you some time. Did you have friends to say good-bye to? Give me my salts, please, and camphor, and fan, and a pillow, and close that shutter. I don’t want the herd looking in upon me; nor do I think this room so very desirable, with all the people passing and repassing. I told Rex so, and he said nobody wanted to see me in my night-cap. He was here to say good-bye. His train got in just in time.”
Bertha closed the shutters and brought a pillow and fan and the camphor and salts, and then bathed the bruise on her forehead, which was increasing in size and finally attracted Mrs. Hallam’s attention.
“Are you hurt?” she asked, and Bertha replied, “I was knocked down in the crowd by a young man who told me he had an aunt, a Mrs. Hallam, on board. I suppose he must have been your nephew.”
“Did you tell him who you were?” Mrs. Hallam asked, with a shake of her head and disapproval in her voice.
“No, madam,” Bertha replied. “He was trying to apologize for what he had done, and spoke to me of you as one to whom I could go for help if I was badly hurt.”
“Yes, that is like Reginald,—thinking of everything,” Mrs. Hallam said. After a moment she added, “He has lived with me since he was a boy, and is the same as a son. He will join me in Aix-les-Bains in August. Miss Grace Haynes is there, and I don’t mind telling you, as you will probably see for yourself, that I think there is a sort of understanding between him and her. Nothing would please me better.”
“There! I have headed off any idea she might possibly have with regard to Rex, who is so democratic and was so struck with her photograph, while she,—well, there is something in her eyes and the lofty way she carries her head and shoulders that I don’t like; it looks too much like equality, and I am afraid I may have to sit on her, as Rex bade me do,” was Mrs. Hallam’s mental comment, as she adjusted herself upon her couch and issued her numerous orders.