It pleased Mrs. Craighill to breakfast in her sitting room the
following morning. Wayne, finding himself deserted, drank his coffee
alone in the dining room, with the newspapers for company. His father’s
chauffeur sent word to the house that Joe was sick and Wayne ordered a
doctor summoned before going to his office.
Mrs. Craighill had spent a bad night and no very pleasant thoughts had
visited her pillow. The preceding day had been the most disagreeable of
her life. She felt herself shut in and trammelled in a thousand ways.
The snowy vesture of the urban landscape disclosed by her windows, the
renewed and purified world that lay bright in the full glare of the
winter sun, awoke no response in her heart. In her prettiest of morning
gowns she seemed to Jean Morley the loveliest and most fortunate of
beings; but to her the girl was only a reminder of yesterday’s untoward
events. Jean’s steady, grave eyes, tranquil from restful slumber and
her freshness--the glow of her skin from the bath, her appearance of
zest for the new day’s business--only irritated Mrs. Craighill as they
sat at the tiny table that had been improvised before the sitting room
fire.
One thing must be done and done quickly: Mrs. Blair must be advised
of her presence in town. She must plead illness as her excuse for not
having gone to Boston. Before the breakfast was finished she went to
the extension telephone in her bedroom and called the Blair house.
“Mrs. Blair is not at home. She went South last night with Mr. Blair.
His mother is ill in Georgia and they left in a hurry. They didn’t know
when they’d be back.”
This information, conveyed by Mrs. Blair’s maid, was only half a
relief. Here was still Jean Morley to reckon with; and it flashed upon
her at once that the girl was now essential to her. She returned to the
sitting room and concluded her breakfast. Her manner was decidedly more
friendly. When Jean rose to go she protested cordially.
“Oh, you have been very good to me! I have enjoyed this visit more than
I can tell you, Mrs. Craighill. And I am sorry to put you to so much
trouble. I was very silly yesterday and made a lot of fuss that wasn’t
at all necessary. I usually do better than that. I hope you won’t think
the worse of me for what happened.”
“You dear child, of course I shan’t,” cried Mrs. Craighill, seizing
her hands. Her spirits lifted as she saw that Jean was intent on her
own plight; that probably she had been thinking wholly of the strange
figure she had made in her flight to the club-house, and that the fact
of there being anything unusual in the presence there of another woman
and a man had not occurred to her.
“Such a thing is likely to happen to any of us,” declared Mrs.
Craighill, laughing. “And there we were--Mr. Craighill and I--just as
lost and forlorn as you were! It was so silly of us all to get lost in
the storm that I think we’d better not tell anyone about it--don’t you?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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