“ I assure you everything’s perfectly all right,” said Ralph. “Let me tell William—”
He was about, in spite of Cassandra’s protest, to reach the door, when Mrs. Hilbery, either warned by the parlor-maid or conscious with her usual prescience of the need for her intervention, opened the door and smilingly surveyed them.
“ My dear Cassandra!” she exclaimed. “How delightful to see you back again! What a coincidence!” she observed, in a general way. “William is upstairs. The kettle boils over. Where’s Katharine, I say? I go to look, and I find Cassandra!” She seemed to have proved something to her own satisfaction, although nobody felt certain what thing precisely it was.
“ I find Cassandra,” she repeated.
“ She missed her train,” Katharine interposed, seeing that Cassandra was unable
