"I am glad you feel like that," he said with an odd note of strain in his voice. "I have ordered the car to meet us at Stirling, so that we shall get home ahead of the train."
Her eyes sparkled with a child-like enjoyment.
"Oh, that will be delightful! I wrote to Malcolm yesterday. He will probably be waiting at Lochearnhead Station. I must wire to him at Crewe."
"I'll see to it," said Rosmead heavily, and his tongue felt as if it were cleaving to the roof of his mouth.
He took her to lunch, and she enjoyed it all, though it concerned her that he ate so little. She was not troubling herself that the other matter seemed to have disappeared into the background, and that he made not the smallest allusion to it. She was grateful to him for his consideration, but she was not surprised. From Peter Rosmead she would expect only the best. He would neither say nor do that which would vex the heart of a woman or increase by a hairsbreadth her perplexities.
Oh, she had made no mistake! she thought as she glanced confidently across at his grave, strong face, when she left him to act for her.
After carefully observing that the papers were out of the way, he got out at Crewe and made his way hastily to the telegraph office to send an explanatory message to his mother. By that time he had arrived at a quite clear estimate of what was in front and at a decision as to the right thing to do.
He would tell Isla after they were in the car, and prepare her as best he might for what she had to meet.
But he was spared the need. All his carefully concerted plan for saving her was rendered unavailing by the shrill tones of a newsboy's voice. The passing of the smallest coin of the realm in exchange for the first edition of an evening paper, and Rosmead got back to the compartment to discover that Isla knew the truth.
CHAPTER XXIX