"Meanwhile?"
"This evening--at dinner."
It was the sharp selfish pressure of this that really, on the
spot, determined the girl; but for the moment, before
closing the door on the question, she only said: "As you
like!"
They were busy much of the day with preparation and
rehearsal, and at dinner that evening the concourse of
guests was such that a place among them for Miss Prime
failed to find itself marked. At the time the company rose
she was therefore alone in the school-room, where,
towards eleven o'clock, she received a visit from Mrs.
Guy. This lady's white shoulders heaved, under the pearls,
with an emotion that the very red lips which formed, as if
for the full effect, the happiest opposition of colour, were
not slow to translate. "My dear, you should have seen
the sensation--they've had a success!"
Charlotte, dumb a moment, took it all in. "It IS as if they
knew it--they're more and more alive. But so much the
worse for both of us! I can't," she brought out with an
effort, "be silent."
"You mean to return them?"
"If I don't I'm a thief."
Mrs. Guy gave her a long hard look: what was decidedly
not of the baby in Mrs. Guy's face was a certain air of
24
HYLAND
