She beat her breast with her hand as if to keep her trembling heart from turning a somersault into her mouth. Then she spoke with a calm that showed how far she had traveled in self-control.
“Very good. You were quite right. Call the chauffeur and tell him to bring round my closed car. Then send me my maid and have the cook get me some coffee. Then you may telephone my mother and father and ask them to come over at once. Please send my car for them. You might have coffee for them also. For we'll all be riding out to—did you say Viewcrest Inn?”
“Yes, ma'am. Very good, ma'am. Thank you!”
He went away thinking to himself. He thought in cockney: “My Gawd! w'at a milit'ry genius! She dictites a horder loike a Proosian general. I'm beginnin' to fink she's gowing to do milord the mokkis prahd. There's no daht abaht it. Stroike me, if there is.”
By the time Kedzie was dressed and coffeed her panicky father and mother were collected and fed, and she had selected her best motor-coat for the shroud of whatever woman it was at Viewcrest. She dared not dream it was Charity.
She had time enough to tell her parents all there was to tell on the voyage, but she had no idea that her limousine was taking her to the very inn that Strathdene had lured her to on that night when he tested her worthiness of his respect.
It had been dark on that occasion and she had been in such a chaos that she had paid no heed to the name of the place or the dark roads leading thither.
She almost swooned when she reached the Viewcrest Inn and found herself confronted by Skip Magruder. And so did Skip. He had not recognized the back of her head before, but her face smote him now. There was no escaping him. Her beauty was enriched by her costume and her mien was ripened by experience, but she was unforgetably herself. He was still a waiter, and the apron he had on and the napkin he clutched might have been the same one he had when she first saw him.
When he saw her now again he gasped the name he had known her by: “Anitar! Anitar Adair! Well, I'll be—”
Then his face darkened with the memory of disprized love. He recalled the cruel answer, “Nothing doing,” that she had indorsed on the stage-door letter he sent her long ago.