"Yes, I'll tell him, but he wasn't hiding, he was only a little way from the entrance."
"Having no man in the family certainly _is_ inconvenient," came from Chrystie, and then with sudden recollection: "What happened to Marquis de Lafayette? Why didn't he come and get it?"
"I don't know, I'm sure." Lorry was looking out of the window.
"Well, I must say if we ask him to our parties the least he can do is to find our hacks."
"I think so, too," said Aunt Ellen. "The young men of today seem to have forgotten their manners."
"Forgotten them!" echoed Chrystie. "You can't forget what you never had."
"Oh, do keep quiet," came unexpectedly from Lorry. "The heat in that place has given me a headache."
Then they were contrite, for Lorry almost never had anything, and their attentions and inquiries had to be endured most of the way home.
Crowder, contrary to his expectations, found Pancha in high good spirits. When a piece failed she was wont to display that exaggerated discouragement peculiar to the artist. Tonight, sitting in front of her mirror, she was as confident and smiling as she had been in the first week of "The Zingara."
"I'm glad to see you're taking it so well," he said. "It's pretty hard following on a big success."
"Oh, it's all in the day's work. You can't hit the bull's eye every time. The management are going to dig down into their barrel next week, hunting for another gypsy rôle. They want me again in my braids and my spangles. They liked my red and orange--Spanish colors for the Spanish girl."
She flashed her gleaming smile at him and he thought how remarkably well she was looking, getting handsomer every day. Her words recalled something he had wanted to ask her and had forgotten.
"Talking of red and orange, how about that anonymous guy that sent you the flowers? You remember, back in the autumn--a lot of roses with a motto he got out of a Christmas cracker?"
She had her comb in her hand and dropped it, leaning down to scratch round for it on the floor.
Up to this Pancha had been nearly as truthful with Crowder as she was with her father. But now a time had come when she felt she must lie. That secret intimacy, growing daily dearer and more dangerous, could not be confessed. Crowder had been mentor as well as friend and she feared not only his curiosity but his disapproval. He would argue, plead, interfere. She disliked what she had to say, and as she righted herself, comb in hand, her face was flushed.