That, for the minute, I was obliged to disregard. If she had to cry she must cry. I could hear the train puffing out of the station, and as far as that went she was safe. My first preoccupations had to do with where we were to go.
For this I made inquiries of the porter, who named what he considered to be the two or three best hotels. I went to the ticket-office and put the same question, getting approximately the same answer. Then, seeing a well-dressed man and lady enter the station from a private car, which I could discern outside, I repeated my investigations, explaining that I had come from New York with an invalid lady who had not been well enough to continue the journey. They told me I could make no mistake in going to one of the houses already named by my previous informants; and so, gathering up the hand-luggage and Mrs. Brokenshire, we set forth.
At the hotel we secured an apartment of sitting-room and two bedrooms, registering our names as "Miss Adare and friend." I ordered the daintiest supper the house could provide to be served up-stairs, with a small bottle of champagne to inspirit us; but, unlike the two heroes of the episode, neither of us could do more than taste food and drink. No kidnapped princess in a fairy-tale was ever more lovely or pathetic than Mrs. Brokenshire; no giant ogre more monstrously cruel than myself. Now that it was done, I figured, both in her eyes and in my own, not as a savior, but a capturer.
She had dried her tears, but she had dried them resentfully. As far as possible she didn't look at me, but when she couldn't help it the reproach in her glances almost broke my heart. Though I knew I had acted for the best, she made me feel a bad angel, a marplot, a spoil-sport. I had thwarted a dream that was as full of bliss as it was of terror, and reduced the dramatic to the commonplace. Here she was picking at a cold quail in aspic face to face with me when she might have been. . . .
I couldn't help seeing myself as she saw me, and when we had finished what was not a repast I put her to bed with more than the humility of a serving-maid. You will think me absurd, but when those tender eyes were turned on me with their silent rebuke, I would gladly have put her back on the train again and hurried her on to destruction. As the dear thing sobbed on her pillow I laid my head beside hers and sobbed with her.
But I couldn't sob very long, as I still had duties to fulfil. It was of little use to have her under my care at Providence unless those who would in the end be most concerned as to her whereabouts were to know the facts—or the approximate facts—from the start. It was a case in which doubt for a night might be doubt for a lifetime; and so when she was sufficiently calm for me to leave her I went down-stairs.
Though I had not referred to it again, I had made a mental note of the fact that Mr. Brokenshire was at Newport. If at Newport I knew he could be nowhere but in one hotel. Within fifteen minutes I was talking to him on the telephone.
He was plainly annoyed at being called to the instrument so late as half past ten. When I said I was Alexandra Adare he replied that he didn't recognize the name.
"I was formerly nursery governess to your daughter, Mrs. Rossiter," I explained. "I'm the woman who's refused as yet to marry your son, Hugh."
"Oh, that person," came the response, uttered wearily.