Miss Million's Maid: A Romance of Love and Fortune
John Stuart Mill · en
And as I turned away in despair I caught an amused grin on his sallow
face under the peaked cap, and I heard him whistle through his teeth a
stave of the music-hall song, "Who Were You With Last Night?"
Horrid, horrid man!
It seems to me this morning that all men are perfectly horrid.
What about this young Lord Fourcastles?
That's the thought that's worrying me now as I walk up and down Miss
Million's deserted sitting-room, unable to settle to anything; waiting,
waiting....
Yes, what about that eyeglassed, rowdy, fair-faced boy who was sticking
flowers in her hair the last time I saw her? Was it she who drove away
from the Thousand and One Club in his car? Was it? And where to?
Can he----Awful thought! Can he possibly have kidnapped Miss Million?
Run away with her? Abducted her?
After all, he must know she's an heiress----
Pooh! Absurd thought! This isn't the eighteenth century. People don't
abduct heiresses any more. Million is all right--somewhere.
She's gone on with one of these people. They've made what they call "a
night" of it, and they're having breakfast at Greenwich, or somewhere in
the country. Yes, but why didn't my mistress wire or telephone from
wherever she is to let her maid know?
Surely she'll want other clothes taken to her? I see visions of her
still in that low-cut, cerise frock, with the June sunlight glinting on
the spangles of it; her creamy restaurant coat still fastened about her
sturdy bare shoulders, the wilting pink carnations still in her hair.
How hideously uncomfortable for her, poor little thing....
CHAPTER XX
WHERE IS SHE?
AT mid-day! Where is she? What have they done with her? And who are
"they"?
Is it an idiotic joke on the part of that noisy, irrepressible Lord
Fourcastles? Is it for some bet that he has spirited the little heiress
away? Is it perhaps some bit of absurd skylarking got up between himself
and the Honourable Jim?
If there's a chance of this it mustn't go further. I shall have to keep
my mouth shut.
I can't go applying to the police--and then having Miss Million turning
up and looking more than foolish! Then scolding her maid for being such
a fool!
That stops my telling anybody else about my fearful anxiety--the mess
I'm in!
Oh! Won't I tell Million what I think of her and her friends--all of
them, Fourcastles, the cobra-woman, "London's Love," the giggling
theatrical girls, and that unscrupulous nouveau-pauvre pirate, the
Honourable Jim--as soon as she does condescend to reappear!...
A tap at the door. I fly to open it....
Only one of those little chocolate-liveried London sparrows, the Cecil
page-boys.
He has a large parcel for Miss Million. From Madame Ellen's. (Oh, yes,
of course. The blush-rose pink that had to be let out.) Carriage
forward.
"Please have it paid and charge it to Miss Million's account," says Miss
Million's maid, with great outward composure and an inward tremor.