"What made you tell her?" demanded Eleanor.
"Because she asked me, and of course I could not deceive her. I don't
believe you know how hard it is to keep things from her."
"_Don't_ I!" said Eleanor, with the tolerant smile of a professional for
an amateur. "Well, a few minutes more won't make any difference. I'll go
and change my dress."
"No, dear; you must go to her first. She's been sending Hannah down every
few minutes to see if you were here."
"Oh, dear! I suppose I'm in for it!" sighed Eleanor, flinging her coat
across the banister. Then, in answer to a plaintive voice from the
library, "Yes, Aunt Enid?"
"Why on earth are you so late, sweetheart? Didn't you know your
grandmother would be fretted?"
The possessor of the plaintive voice emerged from the library, trailing
an Oriental scarf as she came. Like her elder sister, she was tall and
thin, but she did not wear Miss Isobel's look of martyred resignation. On
the contrary, she had the starved look of one who is constantly trying to
pick up the crumbs of interest that other people let fall.
Enid Bartlett might have passed for a pretty woman had her appearance not
been permanently affected by an artist once telling her she looked like a
Botticelli.
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