But my mother interrupted my mechanical reading aloud. "Who," (with her air of listening to sounds beyond my ken) "who can all those people be?"
There was Bettina in the passage making frantic signs that I was to hurry out and speak to her. And voices of men and women came up from the open door. I recognised Lord Helmstone's. I heard him asking the maid if Mr. Annan were here.
"No? That's very odd," said Hermione in her sceptical way— "Perhaps he's come in without your knowing. Will you just find out?"
My mother, too, had heard Lord Helmstone's cheerful bass, suggesting that his party might take shelter here. I had not noticed before the slight rain falling. "Go and ask him to come upstairs," my mother said. And lower: "I don't want him to take it amiss." I saw she was thinking of her refusal to let Betty go on the yacht.
Betty was waiting for me in ambush near the head of the stair: "You must come down and help me. Ranny is there, too."
I was bewildered at finding so many at the
