The blood had rushed to Jacinth's face in a torrent, and for a moment she almost gasped for breath.
'Bessie, Bessie dear, you are such a whirlwind. You have startled Miss Mildmay terribly.'
'I am so sorry,' said Bessie penitently, and then at last Jacinth was able to answer the girl's inquiries, and explain how it had come about that she alone of her family was here so far from home.
'And are you all here?' she asked in return.
'Yes,' Miss Harper answered, 'all of us except my eldest brother. The two others are here temporarily; the little one who is going into the navy got his Christmas holidays, and the other has his long leave just now. And my father is so wonderfully better; you heard, you saw Bessie's letter to Frances?' and Camilla's face grew rosy in its turn.
'Oh yes,' Jacinth replied. 'We were very, very glad. Frances wrote almost at once.'
Bessie shook her head.
'I never got the letter,' she said; 'but we have missed several, I am afraid. We have been moving about so. Cannot you come to see us, Jacinth? Mother, and father too, would love to see you. We are living a little way out in the country at the village of St Rémi; we have got a dear little house there. Camilla and I came in for shopping this morning. Couldn't you come back with us to luncheon? We could bring you home this afternoon, and your maid would take back word to—to Lady Myrtle Goodacre.'
'I am afraid I cannot,' said Jacinth, with some constraint in her voice. 'I never go out anywhere without asking Lady Myrtle's leave.'
'Of course not,' Camilla interposed. 'It would not do at all. You must do as you think best, Miss Mildmay, about getting permission to come to see us. I beg you to believe that, if you think it better not to ask it,' she spoke in a lowered tone, so as to be unheard by Clayton, 'we shall neither blame you nor misunderstand you. And now, perhaps, we had best not keep you waiting longer.'