The weeks were slipping away rapidly, and the Tregonys were beginning to talk about their return to England. The days were often almost insufferably warm, and the birds of passage that crowded the hotels were beginning to take flight to more Northern latitudes. Day after day she had hoped she might discover some way of effecting her deliverance, but no way revealed itself. She was without a friend outside the Tregony family, and yet to return with them to Trewinion Hall would be to put herself in a position as intolerable as it would be compromising.
"What helpless things girls are," she would sometimes say to herself. "If I were only a man I could snap my fingers at everybody. But because I'm a girl I can just do nothing."
She felt so miserable one morning that she refused everyone's company, and went out for a walk alone.
Sir Charles was very cross when he knew, and he was still more cross when lunch time came and she did not return. As the afternoon wore away and she did not put in an appearance, his anger gave place to anxiety, and ultimately to very serious alarm.
CHAPTER XXXI
OLD FRIENDS
"Well, I never! If this ain't the greatest surprise of the trip!"
Madeline looked up with a start. She recognised the American accent, before she had any idea she was being spoken to.