Part 35 (1/2)

Pamela addressed the letter. Yet she held it for a little time in her hand after it was addressed. All the while Warrisden had been speaking she had felt an impulse strong within her to keep him back; and it was because of that impulse, rather than with any thought of Millie Stretton and the danger in which she stood, that Pamela asked doubtfully--

”How long will you be?”

”I should find him within ten days.”

Pamela smiled suddenly.

”It is not so very long,” said she; and she handed the letter across to Warrisden. ”Well, go!” she cried, with a certain effort. ”Telegraph to me when you have found Tony. Bring him back, and come back yourself.” She added, in a voice which was very low and wistful, ”Please come back soon!” Then she rose from the table, and Warrisden put the letter in his pocket and rose too.

”You will be at home, I suppose, in ten days?” he said. And Pamela said quickly, as though some new idea had just been suggested to her mind--

”Oh, wait a moment!”

She stood quite still and thoughtful. There was a certain test by which she had meant to find the soundings of heart. Here was a good opportunity to apply the test. Warrisden would be away upon his journey; she could not help Millie Stretton now by remaining in England. She determined to apply the test.

”No,” she said slowly. ”Telegraph to me at the Villa Pontignard, Roquebrune, Alpes Maritimes, France. I shall be travelling thither immediately.”

Her decision was taken upon an instant. It was the logical outcome of her thoughts and of Warrisden's departure; and since Warrisden went because of Millie Stretton, Pamela's journey to the South of France was due, in a measure, to that lady, too. Yet no one would have been more astonished than Millie Stretton had she learned of Pamela's visit at this time. She would have been quick to change her own plans; but she had no knowledge of whither Pamela's thoughts were leading her.

When Callon in the hansom cab had said to her, ”Come South,” her first swift reflection had been, ”Pamela will be safe in England.” She herself had refused to go south with Pamela. Pamela's desire to go was to her mind a mere false pretext to get her away from her one friend.

If she did not go south, she was very sure that Pamela would not.

There had seemed to her no safer place than the Riviera. But she was wrong. Here, in the village of the Three Poplars, Pamela had made her decision.

”I shall go to Roquebrune as soon as I can make arrangements for a servant or two,” she said.

”Roquebrune,” said Warrisden, as he wrote down the address. ”I once walked up a long flight of steps to that village many years ago.

Perhaps you were at the villa then. I wonder. You must have been a little girl. It was one February. I came over from Monte Carlo, and we walked up from the station. We met the schoolmaster.”

”M. Giraud!” exclaimed Pamela.

”Was that his name? He had written a little history of the village and the Corniche road. He took me under his wing. We went into a wine shop on the first floor of a house in the middle of the village, and we sat there quite a long time. He asked us about Paris and London with an eagerness which was quite pathetic. He came down with us to the station, and his questions never ceased. I suppose he was lonely there.”

Pamela nodded her head.

”Very. He did not sleep all night for thinking of what you had told him.”

”You were there, then?” cried Warrisden.

”Yes; M. Giraud used to read French with me. He came to me one afternoon quite feverish. Two Englishmen had come up to Roquebrune, and had talked to him about the great towns and the lighted streets.

He was always dreaming of them. Poor man, he is at Roquebrune still, no doubt.”

She spoke with a great tenderness and pity, looking out of the window, and for the moment altogether lost to her surroundings. Warrisden roused her from her reverie.

”I must be going away.”

Pamela's horse was brought to the door, and she mounted.

”Walk down the hill beside my horse,” she said; ”just as you did on that other day, when the hill was slippery, your hand upon his neck--so.”

Very slowly they walked down the hill. There were no driving mists to-day, the evening was coming with a great peace, the fields and woods lay spread beneath them toned to a tranquil grey. The white road glimmered. At the bottom of the hill Pamela stopped.