The
manager said that Mrs Maidan had paid her bill, and had gone up
to the station to ask the Reiseverkehrsbureau to make her out a
plan for her immediate return to Chitral. He imagined that he had
seen her come back, but he was not quite certain. No one in the
large hotel had bothered his head about the child. And she,
wandering solitarily in the hall, had no doubt sat down beside a
screen that had Edward and Florence on the other side. I never
heard then or after what had passed between that precious couple.
I fancy Florence was just about beginning her cutting out of poor
dear Edward by addressing to him some words of friendly
warning as to the ravages he might be making in the girl's heart.
That would be the sort of way she would begin. And Edward
would have sentimentally assured her that there was nothing in it;
that Maisie was just a poor little rat whose passage to Nauheim
his wife had paid out of her own pocket. That would have been
enough to do the trick.
For the trick was pretty efficiently done. Leonora, with panic
growing and with contrition very large in her heart, visited every
one of the public rooms of the hotel--the dining-room, the lounge,
the schreibzimmer, the winter garden.
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