“Confound the girl! I had a wrangle with her myself just a little while before,” Isabel exclaimed, angrily.
“Don’t, dear, use such language; you will forget yourself to your sorrow some day. What if Sir Charles or Lady Randal should hear you!”
“I can’t help it, mamma; it does try my patience so to have her turn up just now, when everything is going so lovely.”
“How do you suppose she happened to be here?” asked Mrs. Coolidge, to whom the matter was still a mystery.
“Oh, she is that Miss Dundas, who is companion to Lady Ruxley. Since I met her, a couple of hours ago, I have been making some judicious inquiries, and it seems that, instead of going to the Washington Hotel after leaving us, as she told Wilbur she intended to do, she got tipped over in front of Lady Randal’s town house, broke her arm, and made such an impression upon Lady Ruxley that she insisted upon taking care of her; and finally nothing would do but she must have her for a companion. You know I told you that I saw some one at the villa when we first came here who looked like Miss Douglas, and I got quite a fright over it until Lady Randal told me her name was Mabel Dundas, and that deceived me.”
“It is very unfortunate just now, to say the least, when we are so anxious to have everything go smooth,” complained her mother, wearily.
“That is so,” returned Isabel, with scowling brow. “You say she still has the casket in there with her?”
“Yes.”
“Why under the sun didn’t you take it away from her by main force?”
“Because she was so haughty and defiant I did not dare touch her,” Mrs. Coolidge admitted, with rather a crestfallen air. “Besides, she told me she should appeal to Lord Dunforth if I did not let her go quietly; and I knew, after what you had told me, that that would never do.”