"How very odd!" said the young woman to herself.
Cassandra felt more abashed under the round-eyed gaze of the maid than if she had encountered the queen. Her ring for a messenger had not been answered, and she did not know how to find her husband's country-seat. She felt faint and weary, but did not think of hunger, nor that it was long past the dinner-hour, and that she had eaten nothing since her early breakfast. She only thought that she must be brave and try—try to think how to reach David's people.
Resolutely she closed her door, and dressed her baby carefully; then she arrayed herself in the soft silk gown, and the wide hat with the heavy plume, and then—could David have seen her with her courageous eyes and lifted head, and the faint color from excitement in her cheeks—he would no longer have feared to take her by the hand and lead her to his mother and say, "She is my wife, and the loveliest lady in the land."
People looked at her as she passed, and turned to look again. Down wide, carpeted stairs she went, until she came to a broad landing with recessed windows, where were round polished tables and people seated, sipping tea and eating thin bread and butter and muffins. Then Cassandra knew that she was hungry and sat herself in one of the windows apart, before a table. Presently a young man came and bent down to her as if listening. She looked up at him in bewilderment, but at the same instant, seeing another young man similarly dressed bearing a tray of muffins and tea to a lady and gentleman near by, she said:—