“Thank you very much,” she said to her companion. “I am all right again now. Must we go back to the drawing-room? Oh! I do so want to go home,” she exclaimed wearily. “It is late now, is it not? I wonder if Geneviève—”
“Would you like me to find out if Miss Casalis is ready to go now?” interrupted Mr. Hayle.
“Yes please, I wish you would,” said Cicely. The mention of her cousin’s name had driven back from her cheeks such faint colour as had begun to return to them. Mr. Hayle’s suspicions were confirmed.
“Do I look very dilapidated?” continued Cicely, smiling and smoothing back the ruffled hair from her temples. “I should not like Lady Frederica to think I was ill. I have felt very dull and tired all the evening. You know my father has not been well; we have been anxious about him, and anxiety is very tiring.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Hayle, “nothing more so. You need not go back to the drawing room, Miss Methvyn. We can go round by the passage behind the dining-room, and you can wait in the study while I find your cousin.”
He was turning towards the door through which Trevor and Geneviève had disappeared.
“Not that way,” exclaimed Cicely sharply.
Mr. Hayle glanced at her. “It is much better than having to go through the ball room,” he said composedly. Cicely made no further objections.
The next quarter of an hour was a dream to her. She sat in Sir Thomas’s little study waiting for Geneviève for about ten minutes, clearly conscious of one sensation only an unspeakable horror of meeting Trevor Fawcett face to face and alone. But this she was spared. How Mr. Hayle managed it she never knew; but in a few minutes he reappeared with Geneviève alone.
Then Cicely remembered a vision of Parker and wraps, a hasty progress across the hall, still escorted by the young clergyman, a glimpse through open doors of the still crowded drawing-rooms, a sound of music in the distance—then she seemed to awake to find herself in the carriage, with Parker’s anxious face opposite, dimly discernible in the uncertain light of the flickering lamps, with some one else beside her; some one whose face she dreaded to see, whose voice she shrank from hearing.