“Nonsense! I am much stronger than you think, and with a carriage to ourselves I shall be able to sleep the whole way. Anyhow, I mean to go, so pray get on as fast as you can. If you are not ready, I shall be forced to leave you behind.”
This threat had the desired effect. Phœbe began to bustle about her valiantly, and soon made visible progress.
But in the middle of her packing, she suddenly appeared in the salon.
“You forgot to tell me, my lady, what I was to do with Colonel Dacre’s things.”
“The same as you do with mine, put them into the boxes.”
“Very well, my lady,” answered Phœbe, and went back to her work.
By four o’clock that afternoon the boxes were all packed and corded, the carriage ordered, and everything ready for their departure by the seven-o’clock train from the Northern Railway.
Lady Gwendolyn managed to swallow a cutlet, and drink a couple of glasses of light wine, as a preparation for the journey; and then she dressed herself, while Phœbe was down-stairs, fortifying herself against contingencies.
But before leaving the hotel, Lady Gwendolyn put the telegram which had given her such sorrowful information into an envelope, directed it to Colonel Dacre, “Hotel d’Albion,” stamped it, and then put it into her pocketbook, ready to post in Calais. She thought it explained everything, without its being necessary for her to add a single word; and she was too utterly miserable to write.
Neither did she care to blame him, for she remembered, as the only thing in his extenuation, that she had given way too weakly at first, and ought never to have married him until she had thoroughly investigated the Borton mystery, and made him prove that he was really free.