It was not until she had traveled some distance on her return journey that she realized, what a great many other persons before her had realized, that, she had not got anything very definite out of Mr. McAndrew. She had seemed, indeed, to have had no will of her own while in his presence, and to have done exactly as he told her.
She reached Wainford very tired and very dissatisfied, and found a carriage waiting for her.
“Why, how did you know I was coming?” she asked the coachman, who was an old friend of hers.
“The mistress had a telegram from London,” he said. “Leastways a telegram came for her this morning.”
Bessie stared at him with her eyes widely opened.
“I didn’t telegraph,” she said. “I meant to take a fly home.”
“Well,” he laughed, “here we are, you see, and you’d better get in, anyhow.”
Puzzled and bewildered, she was about to follow his sensible recommendation, when a woman, with a child in her arms, came up quickly, and, pulling at her jacket, said, with a mixture of timidity and earnestness:
“Stop, stop, for God’s sake, miss. I—I must speak to you! I’ve been waiting and watching——”
Bessie turned affrightedly, and, as the light fell upon her face, the woman shrank back with a cry of disappointment.