It was while they were drinking their coffee in the drawing-room that the storm came up. It was one of those cyclonic winds that whip off the tops of the trees and blow the roofs from unsubstantial edifices. The thunder was a ceaseless reverberation—the lightning was pink and made the sky seem like a glistening inverted shell.
Cousin Annabel hated thunder-storms and said so. “I think I shall go to my room, Frederick.”
“You are not a bit safer up there than here,” Towne told her.
“But I feel safer, Frederick.” She was very decided about it. What she meant to do was to sit in the middle of her bed and have her maid give her the smelling salts. She would be thus in a sense fortified.
So she went up and Baldy and Edith wandered across the hall to the library, where Edith insisted they could observe other aspects of the storm.
Jane and her lover were left alone, and presently Frederick was called to the telephone.
“I’m not sure that it’s safe, sir, in this storm,” Waldron warned.
“Nonsense, Waldron,” Towne said, and stepped quickly across the polished floor.
Thus it happened that Jane sat by herself in the great drawing-room of the Ice Palace, while the wind howled, and the rain streamed down the window glass, and all the evil things in the world seemed let loose.
And she was afraid!