Then she caught at an excuse.
"Stella's ill then--since she's not going." "It's not as bad as all that, dear," Lady Splay hastened to reassure her.

"She complained of a racking headache at dinner.

She has gone to bed." The blood flowed back into Joan's cheeks.
"Oh, I see!" she observed slowly.

"That is why her maid came to the library for a book!" But she was very silent throughout the quarter of an hour, which it took them to drive to Harrel.

There was somebody left behind at Rackham Park that night.