THE YELLOW DOVE
larger every moment. She saw the lights and knew that servants were at hand. Her father, too, was in the library, for she saw the glow of his reading-lamp. She had only to shout for help now and someone would hear her. She tried to, but not a sound came from her parching throat. With a last effort she raced up the terrace steps, pushed open the heavy door and shut and bolted it quickly behind her. Then sank into the nearest piece of furniture in a state of physical collapse.
Doris Mather did not faint, an act which might readily have been forgiven her under the circumstances. Her nerves were shaken by the violence of her exercise and the narrowness of her escape, and it was some moments before she could reply to the anxious questions that were put to her. Then she answered evasively, peering through the windows at the moonlit lawn and seeing no sign of her pursuers. In a few moments she drank a glass of water and took the arm of Wilson, her maid, up the stairway to her rooms, after giving orders to the servants that her father was not to be told anything except that she had come in very tired and had gone directly to bed.
For the present at least Cyril’s packet was safe. In her dressing-room Wilson took off her cloak and helped her into bedroom slippers, not, however, without a comment on the bedraggled state of her dinner dress and the shocking condition of her slippers. But Doris explained with some care that Mr. Hammersley’s machine had had a blow-out near the wicket gate, that she had become frightened and had run all the way across the lawn. All of which was true. It didn’t explain Mr. Hammersley’s deficiencies as an escort, but Wilson was too well trained to presume further.
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