“You have been turned out?”
The ejaculated inquiry was Camilla’s. The same idea had occurred to Edward, yet his wife’s outspoken wording of it gave him a galvanic shock at her brutality.
The kneeling angel gave pause to the pants which were heaving her black chiffon breast, to gasp out, with a reproachful look from one to the other of her listeners—
“Turned out! Oh no, I turned myself out.”
The extreme improbability of this statement entirely “dumbed” that one of Miss Ransome’s hearers who was never much addicted to speech, but the other cried out in a key from which no great pains had been taken to extract the incredulity—
“You ran away? at this time of night?”
“I did not run away; I asked them to send me——” She made a dramatic pause. “I was going to say home.”
It was not quite at once that Camilla could bring out her curt query—
“And why, pray?”
By this time the slender darkness had risen to its feet, and was drawing itself up, not without a touch of unfamiliar dignity.