"Good gracious!" exclaimed Coralie.
She was looking at the door with surprised eyes. There stood Verena,
her bonnet on; evidently just come in.
Verena tripped forward, bent down, and kissed her sister. "Have you been
desperately angry, Coral?" she lightly asked, giving me her hand to
shake. "I know papa has."
"_I_ have not been angry," was Coralie's equable answer: "but you have
acted childishly, Verena. And now, where have you been?"
"Only in Woburn Place, at Mrs. Ball's," said Verena, throwing off her
bonnet, and bringing her lovely flushed face close to the light as she
sat down. "When I left here that evening--and really, Johnny, I was
sorry not to stay and go in to dinner with _you_," she broke off, with
a smile--"I went straight to our old lodgings, to good old Mother Ball.
'They are frightful tyrants at home,' I said to her, 'I'm not sure but
they'll serve me as Bluebeard did his wives; and I want to stay with you
for a day or two.' There's where I have been all the time, Coral; and I
wondered you and papa did not come to look for me."
"It is where I fancied you might be," returned Coral. "But I only
thought of it on Saturday night. Does that mean check, Johnny?"
"Check and mate, mademoiselle."
"Oh, how wicked you are!"
"Mrs. Ball has been more careful of me than she'd be of gold," went on
Vera, her blue eyes dancing. "The eldest daughter, Louise, is at home
now: she teaches music in a school: and, if you'll believe me, Coral,
the old mother would never let me stir out without Louise. When Edward
Pym came up in the evening to take me for a walk, Louise must go with
us. 'I feel responsible to your papa and sister, my dear,' the old woman
would say to me. Oh, she was a veritable dragon."
"Was Louise with you when you went on board the _Rose of Delhi_
yesterday afternoon?" cried Coralie, while I began to put away the
chessmen.
Verena opened her eyes. "How _did_ you hear of that? No, we tricked
Louise for once. Edward had fifty things to say to me, and he wanted me
alone. After dinner he proposed that we should go to afternoon service.
I made haste, and went out with him, calling to Louise that she'd catch
us up before we reached the church, and we ran off in just the contrary
direction. "I should like to show you my ship," Edward said; and we
went down in an omnibus. Mrs. Ball shook her head when we got back, and
said I must never do it again. As if I should have the chance, now
Edward's gone!"