Part 43 (1/2)

”I should be glad if you could let me have it,” she said, grimly.

The appeal, besides being unpersuasive in manner, was too general; it did not particularize. There was no frankness between them. She saw his suspicions multiplying. What did he suspect? What could he suspect? ... Ah! And why was she herself so timorous, so strangely excited, about going even to the edge of Dartmoor? And why did she feel guilty, why was her glance so constrained?

”Well, I can't,” he answered. ”Not now; but if anything unexpected turns up, I can send you a cheque.”

She was beaten.

The cab stopped at the front-door, well in advance of time.

”It's for Janet,” she muttered to him, desperately.

Edwin's face changed.

”Why in thunder didn't you say so to start with?” he exclaimed. ”I'll see what I can do. Of course I've got a fiver in my pocket-book.”

There were a number of men in the town who made a point of always having a reserve five-pound note and a telegraph-form upon their persons. It was the dandyism of well-off prudence.

He sprang out of the room. The door swung to behind him.

In a very few moments he returned.

”Here you are!” he said, taking the note from his pocket-book and adding it to a collection of gold and silver.

Hilda was looking out of the window at the tail of the cab. She did not move.

”I don't want it, thanks,” she replied coldly. And she thought: ”What a fool I am!”

”Oh!” he murmured, with constraint.

”You'd do it for her!” said Hilda, chill and clear, ”But you wouldn't do it for me.” And she thought: ”Why do I say such a thing?”

He slapped all the money crossly down on the desk and left the room.

She could hear him instructing Ada and the cabman in the manipulation of the great portmanteau.

”Now, mother!” cried George.

She gazed at the money, and, picking it up, shovelled it into her purse.

It was irresistible.

In the hall she kissed George, and nodded with a plaintive smile at Ada.

Edwin was in the porch. He held back; she held back. She knew from his face that he would not offer to kiss her. The strange power that had compelled her to alienate him refused to allow her to relent. She pa.s.sed down the steps out into the rain. They nodded, the theory for George and Ada being that they had made their farewells in the boudoir.

But George and Ada none the less had their notions. It appeared to Hilda that instead of going for a holiday with her closest friend, she was going to some recondite disaster that involved the end of marriage.

And the fact that she and Edwin had not kissed outweighed all other facts in the universe. Yet what was a kiss? Until the cab laboriously started she hoped for a miracle. It did not happen. If only on the previous night she had not absolutely insisted that n.o.body from the house should accompany her to Knype! ... The porch slipped from her vision.

CHAPTER XIV