Mrs. Craighill had spent a bad night and no very pleasant thoughts had visited her pillow. The preceding day had been the most disagreeable of her life. She felt herself shut in and trammelled in a thousand ways. The snowy vesture of the urban landscape disclosed by her windows, the renewed and purified world that lay bright in the full glare of the winter sun, awoke no response in her heart. In her prettiest of morning gowns she seemed to Jean Morley the loveliest and most fortunate of beings; but to her the girl was only a reminder of yesterday’s untoward events. Jean’s steady, grave eyes, tranquil from restful slumber and her freshness—the glow of her skin from the bath, her appearance of zest for the new day’s business—only irritated Mrs. Craighill as they sat at the tiny table that had been improvised before the sitting room fire.
One thing must be done and done quickly: Mrs. Blair must be advised of her presence in town. She must plead illness as her excuse for not having gone to Boston. Before the breakfast was finished she went to the extension telephone in her bedroom and called the Blair house.
“Mrs. Blair is not at home. She went South last night with Mr. Blair. His mother is ill in Georgia and they left in a hurry. They didn’t know when they’d be back.”
This information, conveyed by Mrs. Blair’s maid, was only half a relief. Here was still Jean Morley to reckon with; and it flashed upon her at once that the girl was now essential to her. She returned to the sitting room and concluded her breakfast. Her manner was decidedly more friendly. When Jean rose to go she protested cordially.
“Oh, you have been very good to me! I have enjoyed this visit more than I can tell you, Mrs. Craighill. And I am sorry to put you to so much trouble. I was very silly yesterday and made a lot of fuss that wasn’t at all necessary. I usually do better than that. I hope you won’t think the worse of me for what happened.”
“You dear child, of course I shan’t,” cried Mrs. Craighill, seizing her hands. Her spirits lifted as she saw that Jean was intent on her own plight; that probably she had been thinking wholly of the strange figure she had made in her flight to the club-house, and that the fact of there being anything unusual in the presence there of another woman and a man had not occurred to her.
“Such a thing is likely to happen to any of us,” declared Mrs. Craighill, laughing. “And there we were—Mr. Craighill and I—just as lost and forlorn as you were! It was so silly of us all to get lost in the storm that I think we’d better not tell anyone about it—don’t you?”
“You may be sure I’m not proud of my part in it,” declared Jean; “but I must send back the housekeeper’s shoes, and get my own.”
“Oh, don’t think of it!” exclaimed Mrs. Craighill, to whom, in the new confidence established between them, a mere item of shoes seemed the most negligible thing in the world. “I’m going to get you to accept—please!—a pair of shoes from me—a souvenir of the occasion—and I’ll see that the borrowed ones get back to Rosedale.”
“Well——” began Jean, taken aback by Mrs. Craighill’s animation.