Part 56 (1/2)
”If she ever had any illusions.”
”I am afraid she had, Beryl, I'm afraid she had. That was a most unfortunate adventure on the cliffs--most unfortunate,” and Sir Charles turned again to the paper he had been reading.
Had the Tregonys been close observers they might have detected a forced and an unnatural note in Madeline's gaiety. She was mirthful at times when there appeared to be no sufficient reason for her mirth, and cheerful when the conditions were most depressing.
When alone in her own room she generally paid the penalty. Frequently her spirits sank to zero. The desire to help Rufus Sterne was natural enough; but her helplessness drove her almost to despair. She could not even help herself. In a sense she was as much in the toils of circ.u.mstance as he was. She not only wondered what would become of him, but what would become of herself.
The weeks were slipping away rapidly, and the Tregonys were beginning to talk about their return to England. The days were often almost insufferably warm, and the birds of pa.s.sage that crowded the hotels were beginning to take flight to more Northern lat.i.tudes. Day after day she had hoped she might discover some way of effecting her deliverance, but no way revealed itself. She was without a friend outside the Tregony family, and yet to return with them to Trewinion Hall would be to put herself in a position as intolerable as it would be compromising.
”What helpless things girls are,” she would sometimes say to herself.
”If I were only a man I could snap my fingers at everybody. But because I'm a girl I can just do nothing.”
She felt so miserable one morning that she refused everyone's company, and went out for a walk alone.
Sir Charles was very cross when he knew, and he was still more cross when lunch time came and she did not return. As the afternoon wore away and she did not put in an appearance, his anger gave place to anxiety, and ultimately to very serious alarm.
CHAPTER x.x.xI
OLD FRIENDS
”Well, I never! If this ain't the greatest surprise of the trip!”
Madeline looked up with a start. She recognised the American accent, before she had any idea she was being spoken to.
”Well, now, who _would_ have thought it? I regard this as a real streak of luck.”
”What, Kitty Harvey?” Madeline exclaimed, in a tone of eager surprise.
”Oh, I am so glad!” And a moment later the two girls were embracing each other with a warmth and an effusiveness that would have done justice to an Oriental greeting.
”I spied you from the other side of the way,” Kitty Harvey said at length, tears of genuine pleasure s.h.i.+ning in her eyes, ”and I said to mamma, 'If that ain't Madeline Grover, then I'm the blindest c.o.o.n that ever walked in shoe leather.'”
”Is your mother here?” Madeline queried, eagerly.
”We're all here, my dear, a regular family party, with sundry relations to keep things lively. But here comes the little mother, two hundred pounds of her, and as cheerful as ever.”
”But when did you come?”
”Cast anchor this morning, my dear. That's our yacht out yonder, flying the stars and stripes.”
”What, that? I thought she was a transatlantic liner.”
”Well, I guess she is, or something nearly related to it. But you should talk to d.i.c.k; he knows her from stem to stern, and from the keel to the captain's bridge.”
”Then you are here on a yachting cruise?”
”That's what we are here on just. In fact we've been two-thirds round this globe already.”
”And have you enjoyed it?”