Page:Hollyhock house; a story for girls (IA hollyhockhousest00tagg).pdf/214

194 “I’ve got to find Jane, madrina,” she said, blind to her mother’s appeal to be supported. And she ran away not a little perturbed. For perhaps Lord Kelmscourt would seize the chance which she had given him, and plead his cause, and perhaps Mrs. Garden would relent! Mary trembled to think that her girl-mother might go the way of girls, and leave her new-found daughters desolate.

When, an hour later, Mrs. Garden and her guest returned to the house, Mary, Jane, and Florimel, watching anxiously behind the closed blinds of the upper hall, clutched one another jubilantly. Lord Wilfrid looked serious, far from glad, and their mother was as blithely unruffled as ever.

“Poor lord!” said Jane, with a revulsion of feeling; she had been hating the stranger with all her dynamic force. “She’s held on to her orders, and made him go back to New York! Of course I’m thankful, but you can see he isn’t.”

“Well, I think it’s perfectly great to have a lover, provided you send him off! I like something like this going on in the house, as long as it goes the wrong way—for him,” declared Florimel.

Mary and Jane were convulsed over this