But still she was resolved that her Jason should not as yet be quit of his Medea. So she made her plot. She would herself go down to Rufford and force her way into her late lover’s presence in spite of all obstacles. It was possible that she should do this and get back to London the same day—but, to do so, she must leave London by an early train at 7 a.m., stay seven or eight hours at Rufford, and reach the London station at 10 p.m. For such a journey there must be some valid excuse made to Mrs. Green. There must be some necessity shown for such a journey. She would declare that a meeting was necessary with her mother, and that her mother was at any town she chose to name at the requisite distance from London. In this way she might start with her maid before daylight, and get back after dark, and have the meeting with her mother—or with Lord Rufford as the case might be. But Mounser Green knew very well that Lady Augustus was in Orchard Street, and knew also that Arabella was determined not to see her mother. And if she declared her purpose, without a caution to Mounser Green, the old woman would tell her nephew, and the nephew would unwittingly expose the deceit. It was necessary therefore that she should admit Mounser Green to, at any rate, half a confidence. This she did. “Don’t ask me any questions,” she said. “I know I can trust you. I must be out of town the whole day, and perhaps the next. And your aunt must not know why I am going or where. You will help me?” Of course he said that he would help her; and the lie, with a vast accompaniment of little lies, was told. There must be a meeting on business matters between her and her mother, and her mother was now in the neighbourhood of Birmingham. This was the lie told to Mrs. Green. She would go down, and, if possible, be back on the same day. She would take her maid with her. She thought that in such a matter as that she could trust her maid, and was in truth afraid to travel alone. “I will come in the morning and take Miss Trefoil to the station,” said Mounser, “and will meet her in the evening.” And so the matter was arranged.
The journey was not without its drawbacks and almost its perils. Summer or winter Arabella Trefoil was seldom out of bed before nine. It was incumbent on her now to get up on a cold March morning—when the lion had not as yet made way for the lamb—at half-past five. That itself seemed to be all but impossible to her. Nevertheless she was ready and had tried to swallow half a cup of tea, when Mounser Green came to the door with a cab a little after six. She had endeavoured to dispense with this new friend’s attendance, but he had insisted, assuring her that without some such aid no cab would be forthcoming. She had not told him and did not intend that he should know to what station she was going. “You begged me to ask no questions,” he said when he was in the cab with her, the maid having been induced most unwillingly to seat herself with the cabman on the box—“and I have obeyed you. But I wish I knew how I could help you.”
“You have helped me, and you are helping me. But do not ask anything more.”
“Will you be angry with me if I say that I fear you are intending something rash?”
“Of course I am. How could it be otherwise with me? Don’t you think there are turns in a person’s life when she must do something rash. Think of yourself. If everybody crushed you; if you were ill-treated beyond all belief; if the very people who ought to trust you doubted you, wouldn’t you turn upon somebody and rend him?”
“Are you going to rend anybody?”
“I do not know as yet.”
“I wish you would let me go down with you.”
“No; that you certainly cannot. You must not come even into the station with me. You have been very good to me. You will not now turn against me.”
“I certainly will do nothing but what you tell me.”
“Then here we are—and now you must go. Jane can carry my handbag and cloak. If you choose to come in the evening at ten it will be an additional favour.”
“I certainly will do so. But Miss Trefoil, one word.” They were now standing under cover of the portico in front of the railway station, into which he was not to be allowed to enter. “What I fear is this;—that in your first anger you may be tempted to do something which may be injurious to—to your prospects in life.”
“I have no prospects in life, Mr. Green.”
“Ah;—that is just it. There are for most of us moments of unhappiness in which we are tempted by our misery to think that we are relieved at any rate from the burden of caution, because nothing that can occur to
