Part 12 (2/2)

”No. I don't think he'll do that. If he did he would betray his own knowledge,” was my friend's answer.

The next day pa.s.sed uneventfully, and beyond the general surprise at Tibbie's continued absence there was nothing unusual in the household at Ryhall Place.

Late that night Mason returned, saying that her mistress had driven the car to the Bath Hotel, at Bournemouth, and put it into the garage.

Three hours later she left the hotel to go for a walk, but did not return. After she had gone the maid had, it seemed, found a letter in which her mistress ordered her to remain there until Wednesday, and telling her that if she did not return then she was to go back to Ryhall and send the chauffeur to Bournemouth for the car.

Mason, used to Tibbie's erratic ways, thought little of it. Her mistress travelled a great deal, had a very large circle of friends, and besides, was entirely unconventional and knew well how to take care of herself. Therefore the maid had remained until midday on Wednesday and then returned to Ryhall.

”I'm getting a little anxious about Tibbie,” remarked old Lady Scarcliff in the drawing-room that evening. ”This kind of thing is not at all proper--flying about the country alone.”

Jack laughed.

”No good worrying about Tibbie, mater. She'll turn up all right to-morrow, or you'll get a wire from her. You remember that time she met the Hursts in Nice and went off yachting with them down the Mediterranean, and we didn't know where she was for three weeks. And then she calmly said she'd quite forgotten to tell us where she was going.”

”Ah, I remember,” said the viscountess, a kind-faced old lady whom I liked immensely. ”I do wish she would consider my feelings a little more.”

With that the subject dropped.

Next morning I took leave of them all, and promising to meet Eric a few days later, took the train up to town to keep the secret tryst with my little friend who had so suddenly disappeared.

As I stood at the kerb looking up and down the wet pavement with its busy, hurrying crowd carrying umbrellas, I knew that I had commenced a very dangerous game. Would she keep her appointment? Did she really intend to go into voluntary exile in some mean street in one of the dismal southern suburbs? Was it possible that she who had from her birth been used to every luxury and extravagance could pose successfully as the wife of a compositor with forty s.h.i.+llings a week?

Ah! would not her very voice, her smart expressions, betray her as a lady?

I heard the rumbling of a train below, and once again up the grimy stairs came a long string of eager men and women returning from the City to their homes, tumbling over each other in their anxiety to get back after the day's toil. They swept past me along the Pentonville Road, and then I stood again, reflecting and watching, until suddenly a figure in neat black halted before me, and I found myself face to face with the fugitive.

”Tibbie!” I cried. ”Then you've really come, after all?”

”Of course,” was her answer in a low, half-frightened tone. ”When I make an appointment I keep it. Where shall we go? We can't talk here, can we?”

A hansom was pa.s.sing, and hailing it we got in hurriedly. I told the man to drive across Waterloo Bridge to the Elephant and Castle, a neighbourhood where we would be both quite unknown. Then, as I sank beside her, she asked, with a pretty, mischievous smile,--

”Well, Wilfrid, and how do you like me as your wife?”

”My wife!” I echoed. ”By Jove, yes. I forgot that,” and I recollected the strange game I was playing.

”Don't Mason's things fit me well? She's just my figure. I took this dress, jacket and hat from her box and put them into mine when I left Ryhall in the car. I thought they'd come in useful.”

I looked at her, and saw that with her brown hair brushed severely from her forehead, her small close-fitting hat and slightly shabby black jacket she was quite a demure little figure. The exact prototype of the newly-married wife of a working-man.

”It's really quite a suitable get-up, I think,” I said, laughing.

”Yes. I've decided to explain to the curious that I was a lady's-maid, and that we've been married nearly a year. Recollect that--in order to tell the same story. Where's the ring? Did you think of that?” Yes, I had thought of it. I felt in my vest pocket, and taking out the plain little band of gold that I had bought in a shop in Regent Street that afternoon, placed it upon the finger, she laughing heartily, and then bending to examine it more closely in the uncertain light of the gas-lamps in Gray's Inn Road.

”If I told you the truth, Wilfrid, you'd be horribly annoyed,” she said, looking at me with those wonderful eyes of hers.

”No. What is it?” I asked.

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