Anne took a chair facing her aunt. "I did not breakfast with Miss Ogilvy. I have been talking to Mr. Warner all the morning."
"Heavens! what a waste of time, when you might have been talking to Hunsdon in the morning-room. It was quite empty. Maria has Mr. Warner in charge. I hope you have not been walking about with him. You know I told you----"
"No one saw us. We talked up in one of the jungles."
"One of the jungles!" Mrs. Nunn sat up. "I never heard anything sound so horrid. Do you tell me that you have the habit of sitting in jungles--dear me--with young gentlemen! I forbid you to go out again unattended."
"This was the first time."
"It assuredly will be the last."
"I think not. Mr. Warner has a hut in the jungle and I am going to marry him."
"What--you----" And then as she met Anne's eyes she gave a piercing scream, and her maid rushed in. "The sal volatile!" she gasped. "The salts."
She fell back limp, and Anne, who was unaccustomed to the easy fainting of fine ladies, was terrified and administered the restoratives. But Mrs. Nunn may have been less time reviving than Anne fancied, for when she finally opened her eyes they were very hard and her features singularly composed.
"You may go, Claire," she said to the maid. "Return in an hour and pack my boxes. We leave by the packet to-morrow. Now," she added, turning to Anne, "I am prepared to talk to you. Only kindly remember, if you have anything further of a startling nature to communicate, that I am accustomed to less direct and brutal methods."
"I am sorry," said Anne humbly. Mrs. Nunn waved apology aside.
"Of course you know that I shall never give my consent. Are you determined to marry without it?"
"Yes."
"Your father all over. It was his expression of inhuman obstinacy in your eyes that gave me even more of a shock than your words. Many a time I endeavoured to gain his consent to your visiting London where you would have seen the world and been sensibly married by this time. Never under my earlier tutelage would you have made a fool of yourself. And you have used Hunsdon abominably ill."
"I have given him no encouragement whatever----"
"Do not argue. My nerves will not stand it. Now this much I have the right to demand: You are of age, I cannot prevent your marrying this outcast, but you owe it to me as well as to yourself to return to London, be presented to Her Majesty, and do a London season----"