“From Guy Waynflete, Ingleby Station. My aunt has sent for me. I must go, excuse me. Make yourself comfortable. Will telegraph when to expect me back, but not to-day.”
Cuthbert uttered a dismayed exclamation which frightened the girls, and obliged him to read the telegram aloud.
“Why, how very polite, and how very extravagant to telegraph up here! You would have heard when you got back. He must have paid five shillings for it!” said Kitty.
“He is rather punctilious,” answered Cuthbert. “But I hope nothing is wrong. He is not well, and I am sorry he has had to go off in this way. He meant to go to-morrow.”
The words expressed Cuthbert’s anxiety very inadequately; he fell silent, and Violet said—
“Well, he’ll have a more comfortable journey than the old Guy, and there won’t be quite so much depending on his getting there by a particular moment.”
“I told you to let all that subject drop, Vi,” said Cuthbert, sharply.
When the visitor was gone, Florella walked aside, and, in the late afternoon, she went away by herself over the withering heather to the rock where she had shown Guy the harebells.
There was no blue now, either in flowers or sky; the wind was driving a heavy, smoky mist before it, and the air was, as Dante calls it, “brown.”
Could it be possible that Guy had meant her to know what he was doing?