“Out of this house she shall go, and the first thing in the morning, too. I’ll have no goings-on with a mountebank like you.”
Miss Cruikshank was terribly upset.
“It is a frightful blow for Miss Violet,” she said to cook, “but perhaps Mrs. Dunstan will feel more forgiving in the morning. I’ll take her up a glass of champagne now. She is very fond of that, and it will help her to get to sleep.”
Miss Cruikshank went up with the champagne, and told cook to see Mr. Athol out of the house; but the young man, who seemed very anxious and agitated, would not go away immediately. He stayed in the dining-room, smoking, for a while, and when the two younger servants went up to bed, he asked cook to let him remain until he had seen Miss Violet once more, for he was sure she would come down again—he had asked Miss Cruikshank to beg her to do so.
Mrs. Kennett, the cook, was a kind-hearted old woman. She had taken the young people under her special protection, and felt very vexed that the course of true love should not be allowed to run quite smoothly. So she told Mr. Athol to make himself happy and comfortable in the dining-room, and she would sit up by the fire in the library until he was ready to go.
The good soul thereupon made up the fire in the library, drew a chair in front of it, and—went fast to sleep.
Suddenly something awoke her. She sat up and looked round in that dazed manner peculiar to people just aroused from deep sleep.
She looked at the clock; it was past three. Surely, she thought, it must have been Mr. Athol calling to her which had caused her to wake. She went into the hall, where the gas had not yet been turned off, and there she saw Miss Violet, fully dressed and wearing a hat and coat, in the very act of going out at the front door.
In the cook’s own words, before she could ask a question or even utter a sound, the young girl had opened the front door, which was still on the latch, and then banged it to again, she herself having disappeared into the darkness of the street beyond.
Mrs. Kennett ran to the door and out into the street as fast as her old legs would let her; but the night was an exceptionally foggy one. Violet, no doubt, had walked rapidly away, and there came no answer to Mrs. Kennett’s repeated calls.