And then Frederick snarled, “Stay here.”
But neither of them went, for Baldy entered, head cocked, eyes alight—Jane knew the signs.
“They’ve gone,” he said. “I told you I’d get rid of them, Miss Towne.”
He nodded to them all. Absolutely at his ease, lifted above them all by the exaltation of his mood. Finer, Jane told herself, than any of them—his beautiful youth against their world-weariness.
Edith was smiling at Jane. “I knew you at once. You are like your brother.”
They were alike. A striking pair as they stood together. “It is because of Mr. Barnes and his sister that we got in touch with Edith,” Frederick explained. He had regained his genial manner.
“Oh, really.” Adelaide knew that she and her friends ought to go at once. Edith looked tired, and Eloise at moments like this was impossible. But she hated to leave anyone else in the field. “Can’t I give you a lift?” she asked Jane, sweetly, “you and your brother.”
But it was Frederick who answered. “Miss Barnes lives at Sherwood Park. Briggs will take her out.”
So Adelaide went away, and Eloise and the two men, and Edith turned to her uncle and said, “I’m sorry.”
Her face was white and her eyes were shining, and all of a sudden she reached up her arms and put them about his neck and sobbed as if her heart would break.