‘As you please, if you choose to knock yourself up. I’ll tell the superintendent, and walk on to the station. You’ve not a moment to lose, so don’t let her stand dawdling and crying.’
It was a hard task for Lady Merrifield. She called Dolores, whom Mysie was inviting to be one of the village maidens, and bade her put on her things quickly. She ordered cold meat and wine into the dining-room, called Gillian into her room, and explained while dressing, and bade her keep the others away. Then, meeting Dolores on the stairs took her into the dining-room and made her swallow some cold beef, and drink some sherry, before telling her that the magistrates at Darminster wanted to ask her some questions. Dolores looked pale and frightened, and exclaimed,
‘Oh, but he has got away!’
‘My dear, I am grieved to say that he has not.’
Dolores understood, and submitted more quietly and resignedly than her aunt had feared. She was a barrister’s daughter, and once or twice her father had taken her and her mother part of the way on circuit with him, and she had been in court, so that she had known from the first that if her uncle were arrested there was no choice but that she must speak out. So she only trembled very much and said—
‘Aunt Lily, are you going with me?’
‘Indeed I am, my poor child. Uncle Regie is gone on.’
No more was spoken then, but Dolores put her cold hand into her aunt’s muff.
Gillian kept all the flock prisoned in the schoolroom. Wilfred, Val, and Fergus rushed to the window, and were greatly disappointed not to see a policeman on the box, ‘taking Dolores to be tried’—as Fergus declared, and Wilfred insisted, just because Gillian and Mysie contradicted it with all their might. He continued to repeat it with variations and exaggerations, until Jasper heard him, and declared that he should have a thorough good licking if he said so again, administering a cuff by way of earnest. Wilfred howled, and was ordered not to be such an ape, and Fly looked on in wonder at the domestic discipline.
The superintendent had, in fact, walked on with Uncle Reginald, and Dolores saw nothing of him, but was put into an empty first-class carriage, into which her aunt followed her, but her uncle, observing, ‘You know how to manage her, Lily,’ betook himself to a smoking-carriage, and left them to themselves.