"There was a Mrs Morton, a young woman like a lady's-maid, who arrived
here yesterday morning, and left here last evening. A lady was awaiting
her--her mistress, I think."
"What was her name?"
"Mrs Rumbold," was the answer, after referring to the visitors' book.
"Rumbold!" The name of the secret lover.
"Was she old or young?"
"Elderly, with grey hair. A rather stiff, formal kind of person."
"Where have they gone?"
"I heard Mrs Rumbold say that she wanted to go to Oban. So perhaps
they've gone there."
There was a boat down to Oban in three hours' time, therefore I took it,
passed down the beautiful Loch and by the island of Lismore, places too
well known to the traveller in Scotland to need any description, and
that same evening found myself in Oban, the Charing Cross of the
Highlands. I had been there several times before, and always stayed at
the Great Western. Therefore I took the hotel omnibus, and on alighting
asked if a Mrs Rumbold was staying there.
The reply was a negative one, therefore I went round to several other
hotels, finding at last that she and "her maid" had taken a room at the
Alexandra that morning, but had suddenly changed their plans, and had
left at two o'clock by train for the south, but whether for Glasgow or
Edinburgh was not known.
I therefore lost track of them. Sybil had apparently successfully
escaped from her male visitor at Glasgow, while at the same time Mrs
Rumbold--probably the mother of the man she loved in secret--had awaited
her up at Fort William.
For what reason? Why was she now masquerading as maid of the mother of
her lover?
Again, if her visitor in Glasgow was really Parham, he must have very
quickly obtained knowledge of her whereabouts, for only a few days
before I had watched him arrange that ingenious plot against her in
Dean's Yard--a plot which would have no doubt been carried into
execution if Sybil had been present.