“Isn’t it ridiculous, Mr. Carrington,” said she, “we haven’t got a car!”
“Absurd,” agreed Mr. Carrington, helping himself to cake.
“Do you know, this brother of mine here has actually come into a fortune, and yet he won’t buy me even one little motor car!”
Ned frowned and muttered something that might have checked their visitor’s reply, had he noticed the laird’s displeasure, but for the moment he seemed to have become very unobserving.
“Come into a fortune?” said he. “What a bit of luck! How much—a million—two million?”
“Oh, not as much as that, worse luck! But quite enough to buy at least three decent cars if he was half a sportsman! And he won’t get one!”
Mr. Carrington was now trying to balance his cake in his saucer and was evidently too absorbed in his efforts to notice his host’s waxing displeasure.
“In my experience,” said he, “you can’t get a decent car much under four hundred.”
“Well,” said she, “that’s just the figure it would bring it to.”
“Lilian!” muttered her brother wrathfully.
But at that moment Mr. Carrington coughed, evidently over a cake crumb, and failed to hear the expostulation.
“But perhaps he is going to buy you something even handsomer instead,” he suggested.
“Is he!” she scoffed, with a defiant eye on her brother. “I believe he’s going to blue it in something too scandalous to talk about in mixed society! Anyhow it’s something too mysterious to tell me!”
By this time Ned’s face was a thundercloud in which lightning was clearly imminent, but Mr. Carrington now recovered his wonted tact as suddenly as he had lost it.
“That reminds me of a very curious story I heard at my club the other day,” he began, and in a few minutes the conversation was far away from Miss Cromarty’s grievances. And then, having finished his cup of tea, he looked at his watch with an exclamation and protested that he must depart on the instant.
As he lay back in his car he murmured with a satisfied smile:
“That’s settled anyhow!”
And then for the whole drive home he fell very thoughtful indeed. Only one incident aroused him, and that but for a moment. It was quite dark by this time, and somewhere between the Keldale House lodge and the town, the lamps of the car swept for an instant over a girl riding a bicycle in the opposite direction. Carrington looked round quickly and saw that she was Miss Cicely Farmond.
XXVII
Flight
On the morning after his visit from Mr. Carrington, Ned Cromarty took his keeper with him and drove over to shoot on a friend’s estate. He stayed for tea and it was well after five o’clock and quite dark when he started on his long drive home. The road passed close to a wayside station with a level crossing over the line, and when they came to this the gates were closed against them and the light of the signal of the up line had changed from red to white.
“Train’s up to time,” said Ned to the keeper. “I thought we’d have got through before she came.”
There was no moon, a fine rain hung in the air, and the night was already pitch dark. Sitting there in the dogcart before the closed gates, behind the blinding light of the gig lamps, they were quite invisible themselves; but about thirty yards to their left they saw the station platform plainly in the radiance of its lights, and, straight before them in the radiance of their own, they could see less distinctly the road beyond the line.
At first, save for the distant rumble of the southward bound train, there was no sign of life or of movement anywhere, and then all at once a figure on a bicycle appeared on the road, and in a moment dismounted beside the station. It was a girl in black, and at the sight of her, Ned bent forward suddenly in his driving seat and stared intently into the night. He saw her unstrap a small suit case from the bicycle and lead the bicycle into the station. A minute or two passed and then she emerged from the ticket office on to the platform carrying the suit case in her hand. The bicycle she had evidently left in the station, and it seemed manifest that she was going by this train.
“That’s Miss Farmond, sir, from Keldale House!” exclaimed the keeper.
His master said nothing but kept his eye intently fixed on the girl. One of the platform lamps lit her plainly, and he thought she looked the most forlorn and moving sight that had ever stirred his heart. There was something shrinking in her attitude, and when she looked once for a few moments straight towards him, there seemed to be something both sad and frightened in her face. Not another soul was on the platform, and seen in that patch of light against an immensity of dark empty country and black sky, she gave him such an impression of friendlessness that he could scarcely stay in his seat. And all the while the roar of the oncoming train was growing louder and ever louder. In a few minutes she would be gone—“Where?” he asked himself.
“I’m wondering where she’ll be going at this time o’ night with nae mair luggage than yon,” said the keeper.
That decided it.
“Take the trap home and
