“I——I came out on an errand for Félicia, way down in the City,” stammered Maimie, remembering for the first time that the errand had never been performed.
“You should have mailed the order. I don’t choose to have you running around for Félicia. You look just tired out.”
“I wish you had been with us just now, Miss Logan,” said Usk, changing the subject hastily, either on account of Maimie’s evident embarrassment or because he could not bear to hear Félicia blamed. “We came across the Archduke Ferdinand Joachim and an aide-de-camp poking about Trafalgar Square in mufti. Wasn’t it a good thing I had studied him so long yesterday, so that I could point him out to Mr Steinherz? But I did wish you and Miss Steinherz were there.”
Usk spoke fast and somewhat nervously. Maimie read in his face that the night had made no change in his feelings. He was prepared to marry Félicia and keep her in ignorance of her father’s descent, and Mr Steinherz was well pleased with his decision. Maimie felt that she hated them both.
“By the way,” said Mr Steinherz, “I guess I am in Félicia’s black books yet?” Maimie nodded, for she had left Félicia comfortably established in her room, with no intention of showing herself for the present. “Well, we lunch Lord Usk to-day, and he would be real sorry to miss her. Do you happen to know anything she wants right now?”
“Why, I guess one of those gold girdles with turquoise bosses would fix up her new Paris tea-gown to perfection,” said Maimie slowly, adding vengefully to herself, as she saw Usk redden, “I won’t let you down easy this time, Pappa Steinherz—talking that way about Fay before her best young man!”
“Then maybe you’ll intimate that I’m bringing along something of the sort when you get back,” said Mr Steinherz.
“Why, certainly. I guess you’ll find Regent Street the best place,” cried Maimie, as the cab moved on. It was some satisfaction to her to see the disappointment on Usk’s face. “He’s death on getting it over,” she said to herself; “and now Mr Steinherz will have him trail half-way round London before coming in.”
But her satisfaction was dashed with dismay when she remembered again the pair of dainty high-heeled slippers still reposing in her satchel. How could she account to Félicia for the morning which was to have been devoted to changing them? If she refused to give an explanation, or offered a lame one, she knew Félicia would never rest until she had solved the mystery. And if she guessed that Maimie did not wish Mr Steinherz to know what she had been doing, she would appeal to him sooner than allow herself to be foiled. There was a relentless malevolence about Félicia on these occasions, when Maimie was trying to deceive her purely for her own good, which Maimie felt deeply.
“I don’t dare go back without changing them,” she sighed to herself, and standing up, began an agitated colloquy with the driver.