The girl said nothing, when they met, about the words scrawled on the
Tauchnitz, and Mrs. Stringham then noticed that she had not the book
with her. She had left it lying and probably would never remember it at
all. Her comrade's decision was therefore quickly made not to speak of
having followed her; and within five minutes of her return, wonderfully
enough, the preoccupation denoted by her forgetfulness further declared
itself. "Should you think me quite abominable if I were to say that
after all----?"
Mrs. Stringham had already thought, with the first sound of the
question, everything she was capable of thinking, and had immediately
made such a sign that Milly's words gave place to visible relief at her
assent. "You don't care for our stop here--you'd rather go straight on?
We'll start then with the peep of to-morrow's dawn--or as early as you
like; it's only rather late now to take the road again." And she smiled
to show how she meant it for a joke that an instant onward rush was
what the girl would have wished. "I bullied you into stopping," she
added; "so it serves me right."
Milly made in general the most of her good friend's jokes; but she
humoured this one a little absently. "Oh yes, you do bully me." And it
was thus arranged between them, with no discussion at all, that they
would resume their journey in the morning. The younger tourist's
interest in the detail of the matter--in spite of a declaration from
the elder that she would consent to be dragged anywhere--appeared
almost immediately afterwards quite to lose itself; she promised,
however, to think till supper of where, with the world all before them,
they might go--supper having been ordered for such time as permitted of
lighted candles. It had been agreed between them that lighted candles
at wayside inns, in strange countries, amid mountain scenery, gave the
evening meal a peculiar poetry--such being the mild adventures, the
refinements of impression, that they, as they would have said, went in
for. It was now as if, before this repast, Milly had designed to "lie
down"; but at the end of three minutes more she was not lying down, she
was saying instead, abruptly, with a transition that was like a jump of
four thousand miles: "What was it that, in New York, on the ninth, when
you saw him alone, Dr. Finch said to you?"
It was not till later that Mrs. Stringham fully knew why the question
had startled her still more than its suddenness explained; though the
effect of it even at the moment was almost to frighten her into a false
answer. She had to think, to remember the occasion, the "ninth," in New
York, the time she had seen Dr. Finch alone, and to recall what he had
then said to her; and when everything had come back it was quite, at
first, for a moment, as if he had said something that immensely
mattered. He hadn't, however, in fact; it was only as if he might
perhaps after all have been going to. It was on the sixth--within ten
days of their sailing--that she had hurried from Boston under the
alarm, a small but a sufficient shock, of hearing that Mildred had
suddenly been taken ill, had had, from some obscure cause, such an
upset as threatened to stay their journey. The bearing of the accident
had happily soon announced itself as slight, and there had been, in the
event, but a few hours of anxiety; the journey had been pronounced
again not only possible, but, as representing "change," highly
advisable; and if the zealous guest had had five minutes by herself
with the doctor, that was, clearly, no more at his instance than at her
own. Almost nothing had passed between them but an easy exchange of
enthusiasms in respect to the remedial properties of "Europe"; and this
assurance, as the facts came back to her, she was now able to give.
"Nothing whatever, on my word of honour, that you mayn't know or
mightn't then have known. I've no secret with him about you. What makes
you suspect it? I don't quite make out how you know I did see him
alone."
"No--you never told me," said Milly. "And I don't mean," she went on,
"during the twenty-four hours while I was bad, when your putting your
heads together was natural enough. I mean after I was better--the last
thing before you went home."