LITERA SCRIPTA MANET.
The house and grounds were in such perfect order that there was very
little to be done in the way of preparation for the honeymoon visitors.
Even the pianos had been periodically tuned, and the clocks had been
regularly wound. Two or three servants would have to be engaged for the
period, and that was all; and even this want Mrs. Dawson proposed to
supply without going off the premises.
The housemaid had a sister, who was an accomplished parlourmaid
and carver; the under-gardener’s eldest daughter was pining for a
preliminary canter in the kitchen, and the gardener’s wife was a
retired cook, and would be delighted to take all the rougher part of
the cooking, while Mrs. Dawson devoted her art to those pretty tiny
kickshaws in which she excelled. There were peaches ripening in the
peach-house, and the apricots were going to be a show. There was wine
in the cellar that would have satisfied an alderman on his honeymoon.
Mildred’s business at The Hook might have been completed in a day, yet
she lingered there for a week, and still lingered on, loving the place
with a love which was mingled with pain, yet happier there than she
could have been anywhere else in the world, she thought.
The chief gardener rowed her about the river, never going very far from
home, but meandering about the summer stream, by flowery meadows, and
reedy eyots, and sometimes diverging into a tributary stream, where the
shallow water seemed only an excuse for wild flowers. He had rowed her
up and down those same streams when she was a child with streaming hair
and he was the under-gardener. He had rowed her about in that brief
summer season when Fay was her companion.
She revisited all those spots in which she had wandered with her lover.
She would land here or there along the island, and as she remembered
each particular object in the landscape, her feet seemed to grow
light again, with the lightness of joyous youth, as they touched the
familiar shore. It was almost as if her youth came back to her.
Thus it was that she lingered from day to day, loth to leave the
beloved place. She wrote frankly to her aunt, saying how much good
the change of air and scene had done her, and promising to return to
Brighton in a few days. She felt that it was her duty to resume her
place beside that fading existence; and yet it was an infinite relief
to her to escape from that dull gray house, and the dull gray life.
She acknowledged to herself that her aunt’s life was a good life, full
of unselfish work and large charity, and yet there was something that
repelled her, even while she admired. It was too much like a life lived
up to a certain model, adjusted line by line to a carefully-studied
plan. There was a lack of spontaneity, a sense of perpetual effort.
The benevolence which had made Enderby village like one family in the
sweet time that was gone had been of a very different character. There
had been the warmth of love and sympathy in every kindness of George
Greswold’s, and there had been infinite pity for wrong-doers. Miss
Fausset’s almsgiving was after the fashion of the Pharisee of old, and
it was upon the amount given that she held herself justified before
God, not upon the manner of giving.
In those quiet days, spent alone in her old home, Mildred had chosen to
occupy Mr. Fausset’s study rather than the large bright drawing-room.
The smaller room was more completely associated with her father. It
was here—seated in the chair before the writing-table, where she was
sitting now—that he had first talked to her of George Greswold, and had
discussed her future life, questioning his motherless girl with more
than a father’s tenderness about the promptings of her own heart. She
loved the room and all that it contained for the sake of the cherished
hands that had touched these things, and the gentle life that had been
lived here. There had been but one error in his life, she thought—his
treatment of Fay.
“He ought not to have sent her away,” she thought; “he saw us happy
together, his two daughters, and he ought not to have divided us, and
sent her away to a loveless life among strangers. If he had only been
frank and straightforward with my mother she might have forgiven all.”
Might, perhaps. Mildred was not sure upon that point; but she felt very
sure that it was her father’s duty to have braved all consequences
rather than to have sent his unacknowledged child into exile. That fact
of not acknowledging her seemed in itself such a tremendous cruelty
that it intensified every lesser wrong.
Mrs. Dawson understood her mistress’s fancy for her father’s room,
and Mildred’s meals were served here, at a Sutherland-table in the
bay-window, from which she could see the boats go by, Mrs. Dawson
having a profound belief in the efficacy of the boats as a cure for low
spirits.
“People sometimes tell me it must be dull at The Hook,” she said; “but,
lor! they don’t know how many boats go by in summer-time. It’s almost
as gay as Bond Street.”
Mildred lived alone with old memories in the flower-scented room, where
the Spanish blinds made a cool and shadowy atmosphere, while the roses
outside were steeped in sunshine. Those few days were just the most
perfect summer days of the year. She felt sorry that they had not been
reserved for Pamela’s honeymoon. Such sunshine was almost wasted on
her, whose heart was so full of sadness.
It was her last afternoon at The Hook, or the afternoon which she meant
to be her last, having made up her mind to go back to Brighton and duty
on the following day, and she had a task before her, a task which she
had delayed from day to day, just as she had delayed her return to her
aunt.
She had to put away those special and particular objects which had
belonged to her father and mother, and had been a part of their lives.
These were too sacred to be left about now that strangers were to
occupy the rooms of the dead. Hitherto no stranger had entered those
rooms since John Fausset’s death, nothing had been removed or altered.
No documents relating to property or business of any kind had been
kept at The Hook. Mr. Fausset’s affairs had all been put in perfect
order after his wife’s death, and there had been no ransacking for
missing title-deeds or papers of any kind. It had been understood that
all papers and letters of importance were either with Mr. Fausset’s
solicitors or at the house in Parchment Street, and thus the household
gods had been undisturbed in the summer retreat by the river.
Mildred had spent the morning in her mother’s rooms, putting away all
those dainty trifles and prettinesses which had gathered round the
frivolous, luxurious life, as shells and bright-coloured weeds gather
among the low rocks on the edge of the sea. She had placed everything
carefully in a large closet in her mother’s dressing-room, covered
with much tissue-paper, secure from dust and moth; and now she began
the same kind of work in her father’s room, the work of removing all
those objects which had been especially his: the old-fashioned silver
inkstand, the well-worn scarlet morocco blotting-book, with his crest
on the cover, and many inkspots on the leather lining inside, his
penholders and penknives, and a little velvet pen-wiper which she had
made for him when she was ten years old, and which he had kept on his
table ever afterwards.
She looked round the room thoughtfully for a place of security for
these treasures. She had spent a good deal of time in rearranging her
father’s books, which careful and conscientious dusting had reduced to
a chaotic condition. Now every volume was in its place, just as he had
kept them in the old days when it had been her delight to examine the
shelves and to carry away a book of her father’s choosing.
The bookcases were by Chippendale, with fretwork cornices and mahogany
panelling. The lower part was devoted to cupboards, which her father
had always kept under lock and key, but which she supposed to contain
only old magazines, pamphlets, and newspapers, part of that vast mass
of literature which is kept with a view to being looked at some day,
and which finally drifts unread to the bourne of all waste paper, and
is ground into pulp again, and rolls over the endless web again, and
comes back upon the world printed with more intellectual food for the
million of skippers and skimmers.
Yes, one of those mahogany panelled cupboards would serve Mildred’s
purpose admirably. She selected a key from one of the bunches in her
key-box, and opened the cupboard nearest the door.
It was packed tight with _Army Lists_, _New Monthly Magazines_,
and _Edinburgh Reviews_—packed so well that there was scarcely an
interstice that would hold a pin. She opened the next cupboard.
_Sporting Magazine_, _Blackwood_, _Ainsworth_, and a pile of pamphlets.
No room there.
She opened the third, and found it much more loosely packed, with odd
newspapers, and old Prayer Books and Bibles: shabby, old-fashioned
books, which had served for the religious exercises of several
generations of Faussets, and had been piously preserved by the owner
of The Hook. There was room here perhaps for the things in the
writing-table, if all these books and papers were rearranged and
closely packed.
Mildred began her work patiently. She was in no hurry to have done with
her task; it brought her nearer to her beloved dead. She worked slowly,
dreamily almost, her thoughts dwelling on the days that were gone.
She took out the Prayer Books and Bibles one by one, looking at a
fly-leaf now and then. John Fausset, from his loving mother, on the day
of his confirmation, June 17, 1835; Lucy Jane Fausset, with her sister
Maria’s love, April 3, 1804; Mark Fausset, in memory of little Charlie,
December 1, 1807. Such inscriptions as these touched her, with their
reminiscences of vanished affection, of hearts long mingled with the
dust.
She put the books on one side in a little pile on the carpet, as she
knelt before the open cupboard, and then she began to move the loose
litter of newspapers. The _Morning Herald_, the _Morning Chronicle_,
the _Sun_. Even _these_ were of the dead.
The cupboard held much more than she had expected. Behind the
newspapers there were two rows of pigeons-holes, twenty-six in all,
filled—choke-full, some of them—with letters, folded longwise, in a
thoroughly business-like manner.
Old letters, old histories of the family heart and mind, how much they
hold to stir the chords of love and pain! Mildred’s hand trembled as
she stretched it out to take one of those letters, idly, full of morbid
curiosity about those relics of a past life.
She never knew whether it had been deliberation or hazard which guided
her hand to the sixth pigeon-hole, but she thought afterwards that
her eye must have been caught by a bit of red ribbon—a spot of bright
colour—and that her hand followed her eye mechanically. However this
may have been, the first thing that she took from the mass of divers
correspondence in the twenty-six pigeon-holes was a packet of about
twenty letters tied with a red ribbon.
Each letter was carefully indorsed “M. F.” and a date. Some were
on foreign paper, others on thick gilt-edged note. A glance at the
uppermost letter showed her a familiar handwriting—her aunt’s, but
very different from Miss Fausset’s present precise penmanship. The
writing here was more hurried and irregular, bolder, larger, and more
indicative of impulse and emotion.
No thought of possible wrong to her aunt entered Mildred’s mind as
she untied the ribbon and seated herself in a low chair in front of
the bookcase, with the letters loose in her lap. What secrets could
there be in a girl’s letters to her elder brother which the brother’s
daughter might not read, nearly forty years after they were written?
What could there be in that yellow paper, in that faded ink, except
the pale dim ghosts of vanished fancies, and thoughts which the thinker
had long outlived?
“I wonder whether my aunt would care to read these old letters?” mused
Mildred. “It would be like calling up her own ghost. She must have
almost forgotten what she was like when she wrote them.”
The first letter was from Milan, full of enthusiasm about the Cathedral
and the Conservatoire, full of schemes for work. She was practising six
hours a day, and taking nine lessons a week—four for piano, two for
singing, three for harmony. She was in high spirits, and delighted with
her life.
“I should practise eight hours a day if Mrs. Holmby would let me,” she
wrote, “but she won’t. She says it would be too much for my health.
I believe it is only because my piano annoys her. I get up at five
on these summer mornings, and practise from six to half-past eight;
then coffee and rolls, and off to the Conservatoire; then a drive
with Mrs. Holmby, who is too lazy to walk much; and then lunch. After
lunch vespers at the Cathedral, and then two hours at the piano
before dinner. An hour and a half between dinner and tea, which we
take at nine. Sometimes one of Mrs. Holmby’s friends drops in to tea.
You needn’t be afraid: the men are all elderly, and not particularly
clean. They take snuff, and their complexions are like mahogany; but
there is one old man, with bristly gray hair standing out all over
his head like a brush, who plays the ’cello divinely, and who reminds
me of Beethoven. I am learning the ‘Sonate Pathétique,’ and I play
Bach’s preludes and fugues two hours a day. We went to La Scala the
night before last; but I was disappointed to find they were playing
a trumpery modern opera by a Milanese composer, who is all the rage
here.”
Two or three letters followed, all in the same strain, and then came
signs of discontent.
“I have no doubt Mrs. Holmby is a highly respectable person, and I
am sure you acted for the best when you chose her for my chaperon,
but she is a lump of prejudice. She objects to the Cathedral. ‘We are
fully justified in making ourselves familiar with its architectural
beauties,’ she said, in her pedantic way, ‘but to attend the services
of that benighted church is to worship in the groves of Baal.’ I told
her that I had found neither groves nor idols in that magnificent
church, and that the music I heard there was the only pleasure which
reconciled me to the utter dulness of my life at Milan—I was going
to say my life with her, but thought it better to be polite, as I am
quite in her power till you come to fetch me.
“Don’t think that I am tired of the Conservatoire, after teasing you
so to let me come here, or even that I am home-sick. I am only tired
of Mrs. Holmby; and I daresay, after all, she is no worse than any
other chaperon would be. As for the Conservatoire, I adore it, and I
feel that I am making rapid strides in my musical education. My master
is pleased with my playing of the ‘Pathétique,’ and I am to take the
‘Eroica’ next. What a privilege it is to know Beethoven! He seems to
me now like a familiar friend. I have been reading a memoir of him.
What a sad life—what a glorious legacy he leaves the world which
treated him so badly!
“I play Diabelli’s exercises for an hour and a half every morning,
before I look at any other music.”
In the next letter Mildred started at the appearance of a familiar name.
“Your kind suggestion about the Opera House has been followed,
and we have taken seats at La Scala for two nights a week. Signor
Castellani’s opera is really very charming. I have heard it now three
times, and liked it better each time. There is not much learning in
the orchestration; but there is a great deal of melody all through
the opera. The Milanese are mad about it. Signor Castellani came to
see Mrs. Holmby one evening last week, introduced by our gray-haired
’cello-player. He is a clever-looking man, about five-and-thirty, with
a rather melancholy air. He writes his librettos, and is something of
a poet.
“We have made a compromise about the Cathedral. I am to go to vespers
if I like, as my theological opinions are not in Mrs. Holmby’s
keeping. She will walk with me to the Cathedral, leave me at the
bottom of the steps, do her shopping or take a gentle walk, and return
for me when the service is over. It only lasts three-quarters of an
hour, and Mrs. Holmby always has shopping of some kind on her hands,
as she does all her own marketing, and buys everything in the smallest
quantities. I suppose by this means she makes more out of your
handsome allowance for my board—or fancies she does.”
There were more letters in the same strain, and Castellani’s name
appeared often in relation to his operas; but there was no further
mention of social intercourse. The letters grew somewhat fretful in
tone, and there were repeated complaints of Mrs. Holmby. There were
indications of fitful spirits—now enthusiasm, now depression.
“I have at least discovered that I am no genius,” she wrote. “When
I attempt to improvise, the poverty of my ideas freezes me; and yet
music with me is a passion. Those vesper services in the Cathedral are
my only consolation in this great dull town.
“No, dear Jack, I am not home-sick. I have to finish my musical
education. I am tired of nothing, except Mrs. Holmby.”
After this there was an interval. The next letter was dated six months
later. It was on a different kind of paper, and it was written from
Evian, on the Lake of Geneva. Even the character of the penmanship had
altered. It had lost its girlish dash, and something of its firmness.
The strokes were heavier, but yet bore traces of hesitation. It was
altogether a feebler style of writing.
The letter began abruptly:
“I know that you have been kind to me, John—kinder, more merciful than
many brothers would have been under the same miserable circumstances;
but nothing you can do can make me anything else than what I have
made myself—the most wretched of creatures. When I walk about in this
quiet place, alone, and see the beggars holding out their hands to me,
maimed, blind, dumb perhaps, the very refuse of humanity, I feel that
their misery is less than mine. _They_ were not brought up to think
highly of themselves, and to look down upon other people, as I was.
_They_ were never petted and admired as I was. They were not brought
up to think honour the one thing that makes life worth living—to
feel the sting of shame worse than the sting of death. They fall
into raptures if I give them a franc—and all the wealth of the world
would not give me one hour of happiness. You tell me to forget my
misery. Forget—now! No, I have no wish to leave this place. I should
be neither better nor happier anywhere else. It is very quiet here.
There are no visitors left now in the neighbourhood. There is no one
to wonder who I am, or why I am living alone here in my tiny villa.
The days go by like a long weary dream, and there are days when the
gray lake and the gray mountains are half hidden in mist, and when all
Nature seems of the same colour as my own life.
“I received the books you kindly chose for me, a large parcel. There
is a novel among them which tells almost my own story. It made me shed
tears for the first time since you left me at Lausanne. Some people
say they find a relief in tears, but my tears are not of that kind. I
was ill for nearly a week after reading that story. Please don’t send
me any more novels. If they are about happy people they irritate me;
if they are sorrowful stories they make me just a shade more wretched
than I am always. If you send me books again let them be the hardest
kind of reading you can get. I hear there is a good book on natural
history by a man called Darwin. I should like to read that.—Gratefully
and affectionately your sister,
M. F.”
This letter was dated October. The next was written in November from
the same address.
“No, my dear John, your fears were unfounded, I have not been ill. I
wish I had been—sick unto death! I have been too wretched to write,
that was all. Why should I distress you with a reiteration of my
misery—and I _cannot_ write, or think about anything else? I have no
doubt Darwin’s book is good, but I could not interest myself in it.
The thought of my own misery comes between me and every page I read.
“You ask me what I mean to do with my life when my dark days are over.
To that question there can but be one answer. I mean, so far as it
is possible, to forget. I shall go down to my grave burdened with my
dismal secret; but I shall exercise every faculty I possess to keep
that secret to the end. _He_ is not likely to betray me. The knowledge
of his own baseness will seal his lips.
“Your suggestion of a future home in some quiet village, either in
England or abroad, is kindly meant, I know, but I shudder at the mere
idea of such a life. To pass as a widow; to have to answer every
prying acquaintance—the doctor, the clergyman—people who would force
themselves upon me, however secluded my life might be; to devote
myself to a duty which in every hour of my existence would remind me
of my folly and of my degradation: I should live like the galley-slave
who drags his chain at every step.
“You tell me that the tie which would be a sorrow in the beginning
might grow into a blessing. That could never be. You know very little
of a woman’s nature when you suggest such a possibility. What _can_
your sex know of a woman’s agony under such circumstances as mine?
_You_ are never made to feel the sting of dishonour.”
A light began to dawn on Mildred as she read this second letter from
Evian. The first might mean anything—an engagement broken off, a
proud girl jilted by a worthless lover, the sense of degradation that
a woman feels in having loved unwisely—in having wasted confidence and
affection upon an unworthy object: Mildred had so interpreted that
despairing letter. But the second revealed a deeper wound, a darker
misery.
There were sentences that stood out from the context with unmistakable
meaning. “When my dark days are over”—“to pass as a widow”—“to devote
myself to a duty which would remind me of my folly and my degradation.”
That suggestion of a secluded life—of a care which should grow into a
blessing—could mean only one thing. The wretched girl who wrote that
letter was about to become a mother, under conditions which meant
life-long dishonour.
White as marble, and with hands that trembled convulsively as they held
the letter, Mildred Greswold read on, hurriedly, eagerly, breathlessly,
to the last line of the last letter. She had no scruples, no sense of
wrong-doing. The secret hidden in that little packet of letters was a
secret which she had a right to know—she above all other people, she
who had been cheated and fooled by false imaginings.
The third letter from Evian was dated late in January:
“I have been very ill—dangerously, I believe—but my doctor took
unnecessary trouble to cure me. I am now able to go out of doors
again, and I walk by the lake for half-an-hour every day in the
morning sun. The child thrives wonderfully, I am told; but if there is
to be a change of nurses, as there must be—for this woman here must
lose sight of her charge and of me when I leave this place—the change
cannot be made too soon. If Boulogne is really the best place you
can think of, your plan would be to meet me with the nurse at Dijon,
where we can take the rail. We shall post from here to that town. I am
very sorry to inflict so much trouble upon you, but it is a part of
my misery to be a burden to you as well as to myself. When once this
incubus is safely disposed of, I shall be less troublesome to you.
“No, my dear John, there is no relenting, no awakening of maternal
love. For me that must remain for ever a meaningless phrase. For me
there can be nothing now or ever more, except a sense of aversion and
horror—a shrinking from the very image of the child that must never
call me mother, or know the link between us. All that can possibly be
done to sever that link I shall do; and I entreat you, by the love of
past years, to help me in so doing. My only chance of peace in the
future is in total severance. Remember that I am prepared to make any
sacrifice that can secure the happiness of this wretched being, that
can make up to her—”
“That can make up to _her_!”
Mildred’s clutch tightened upon the letter. This was the first mention
of the infant’s sex.
“—For the dishonour to which she is born. I will gladly devote half
my fortune to her maintenance and her future establishment in life,
if she should grow up and marry. Remember also that I have sworn to
myself never to entertain any proposal of marriage, never to listen to
words of love from any man upon earth. You need have no fear of future
embarrassment on my account. I shall never give a man the right to
interrogate my past life. I resign myself to a solitary existence—but
not to a life clouded with shame. When I go back to England and resume
my place in society, I shall try to think of this last year of agony
as if it were a bad dream. You alone know my secret, and you can
help me if you will. My prayer is that from the hour I see the child
transferred to the new nurse at Dijon, I shall never look upon its
face again. The nurse can go back to her home as fast as the train
will carry her, and I can go back to London with you.”
The next letter was written seven years later, and addressed from
Kensington Gore:
“I suppose I ought to answer your long letter by saying that I am glad
the child has good health, that I rejoice in her welfare, and so on.
But I cannot be such a hypocrite. It hurts me to write about her; it
hurts me to think of her. My heart hardens itself against her at every
suggestion of her quickness, or her prettiness, or any other merit. To
me she can be nothing except—disgrace. I burnt your letter the instant
it was read. I felt as if some one was looking over my shoulder as
I read it. I dared not go down to lunch for fear Mrs. Winstanley’s
searching eyes should read my secret in my face. I pretended a
headache, and stayed in my room till our eight-o’clock dinner, when
I knew I should be safe in the dim religious light which my chaperon
affects as the most flattering to wrinkles and pearl-powder.
“But I am not ungrateful, my dear John. I am touched even by your
kindly interest in that unfortunate waif. I have no doubt you have
done wisely in placing her with the good old lady at Barnes, and that
she is very happy running about the Common. I am glad I know where
she is, so that I may never drive that way, if I can possibly help
it. Your old lady must be rather a foolish woman, I should think, to
change Fanny into Fay, on the strength of the child’s airy movements
and elfin appearance; but as long as this person knows nothing of her
charge’s history her silliness cannot matter.”
A letter of a later date was addressed from Lewes Crescent.
“I am horrified at what you have done. O, John, how could you be so
reckless, so forgetful of my reiterated entreaties to keep that
girl’s existence wide apart from mine or yours? And you have actually
introduced her into your own house as a relation; and you actually
allow her to be called by your name! Was ever such madness? You
stultify all that has been done in the past. You open the door to
questionings and conjectures of the most dreadful kind. No, I will
not see her. You must be mad to suggest such a thing. My feeling
about her to-day is exactly the same as my feeling on the day she was
born—disgust, horror, dread. I will never—willingly—look upon her face.
“Do you remember those words in _Bleak House_? ‘Your mother, Esther,
is your disgrace, and you were hers.’ So it is with that girl and me.
Can love be possible where there is this mutual disgrace?
“For God’s sake, get the girl out of your house as soon as you can!
Send her to some good school abroad—France, Germany, where you like,
and save me from the possibility of discovery. My secret has been
kept—my friends look up to me. I have outlived the worst part of my
misery, and have learnt to take some interest in life. I could not
survive the discovery of my wretched story.”
A later letter was briefer and more business-like.
“I fully concur in the settlement you propose, and would as willingly
make the sum 40,000_l._ as 30,000_l._ Remember that, so far as money
can go, I am anxious to do the _uttermost_. I hope she will marry
soon, and marry well, and that she may lead a happy and honourable
life under a new name—a name that she can bear without a blush. I
should be much relieved if she could continue to live abroad.”
This was the last letter in the bundle tied with red ribbon. In
the same pigeon-hole Mildred found the draft of a deed of gift,
transferring 30,000_l._ India Stock to Fanny Fausset, otherwise Vivien
Faux, on her twenty-first birthday, and with the draft there were
several letters from a firm of solicitors in Lincoln’s Inn Fields
relating to the same deed of gift.
The last of the letters fell from Mildred’s lap as she sat with her
hands clasped before her face, dazed by this sudden light which altered
the aspect of her life.
“Fool, fool, fool!” she cried.
The thought of all she had suffered, and of the suffering she had
inflicted on the man she loved, almost maddened her. She had condemned
her father—her generous, noble-hearted father—upon evidence that had
seemed to her incontrovertible. She had believed in a stain upon that
honourable life—had believed him a sinner and a coward. And Miss
Fausset knew all that she had forfeited by that fatal misapprehension,
and yet kept her shameful secret, caring for her own reputation more
than for two blighted lives.
She remembered how she had appealed to her aunt to solve the mystery
of Fay’s parentage, and how deliberately Miss Fausset had declared her
ignorance. She had advised her niece to go back to her husband, but
that was all.
Mildred gathered the letters together, tied them with the faded ribbon,
and then went to her father’s writing-table and wrote these lines, in a
hand that trembled with indignation:
“I know all the enclosed letters can tell me. You have kept your
secret at the hazard of breaking two hearts. I know not if the wrong
you have done me can ever be set right; but this I know, that I shall
never again enter your house, or look upon your face, if I can help
it. I am going back to my husband, never again to leave him, if he
will let me stay.
MILDRED GRESWOLD.”
She packed the letters securely in one of the large banker’s envelopes
out of her father’s desk. She sealed the packet with her father’s
crest, intending to register and post it with her own hands on her way
to Romsey; and then, with a heart that beat with almost suffocating
force, she consulted the time-table, and tried to match trains between
Reading and Basingstoke.
There was a train from Chertsey to Reading at five. She might catch
that and be home—home—home—how the word thrilled her! some time before
midnight. She would have gone back if it had been to arrive in the dead
of night.