"Well, that's very funny!" said Evelyn. "That you should know this dearly beloved Claude, about whom I have heard so much lately! Do you know he is coming here to-morrow, to make my acquaintance? Papa has invited him to come for a day or two whilst Alice is here."
Claude coming to Alliston Hall Claude coming to-morrow! How I wished that my stay at the old Manor House had been a little longer. I made some excuse to leave the room soon afterwards, and went to my own bedroom, and locked the door.
"Claude coming to-morrow!" I repeated over and over to myself.
All the old trouble seemed to have come back again. I had hoped that I should never see him again, that our paths in life would never cross each other. And now Claude was coming to-morrow. How astonished he would be to see me here! I wondered how we should meet, and whether he would feel it as much as I did.
As I sat alone in my room I prayed for grace and help, and I felt that the strength came as I prayed. Still I felt that I could not go downstairs, until Evelyn's maid came to tell me that Miss Trafford wanted me.
"You naughty girl!" said Evelyn when I entered. "What have you been doing? Why, you are as cold as ice; come to the fire and warm your hands. I really could not let you stop up there any longer. Do you know I thought you were, at last, turning into the brown alpaca! She always shut herself up in her bedroom half the day."
"And, who in the world is the brown alpaca?" said Alice Fitzgerald. "Do tell me about her, Evelyn."
Evelyn was only too pleased to do so. And then we went on from one laughable subject to another, and Alice Fitzgerald told us a number of amusing stories, in such an absurd way that we laughed until we were quite tired.
"There," she said, at last, as Evelyn declared that she had not laughed so much the whole time she had been ill, and that she felt all the better for it, "that's just what I was saying before Miss Lindsay came into the room; if only people, when they are in low spirits would laugh more, they would be all the happier."
"But when you are in trouble you can't laugh, Miss Fitzgerald," I said.