She met him as they had arranged, at Newton Abbot, and together they proceeded to London. He was serious on the journey and extraordinarily solicitous for Medora’s mental and physical comfort. She told him all that she had done and he explained his own purposes. At Bristol he got her a cup of tea and a piece of cake. They had enjoyed privacy so far; but now others entered the carriage and they could talk no more. So Mrs. Dingle fell back on her thoughts and pictured the sequence of events at home, while Kellock read a newspaper. Her heart beat high when London was reached and the train plunged into Paddington.
“I’m afraid we must practice a little guile, Medora,” he said as they walked down Praed Street, Jordan carrying their luggage; “but as little as possible.”
They proceeded to Edgeware Road, where the man knew a small hotel.
“Keep on your gloves for the moment,” he advised. “The first thing I shall do to-morrow will be to buy you a wedding ring.”
“We are married,” declared Medora. “Already I feel as properly married to you as I can be.”
But he soared to no such imaginative heights.
“Marriage is marriage,” he answered. “We must possess our souls in patience.”
He spoke as though he were not going to find this difficult. Indeed he was nervous and anxious to have certain preliminaries completed. At the “Edgeware Arms” Kellock asked for two bedrooms with a firm voice and registered their names as “Mr. and Mrs. Jordan Kellock, from Totnes, Devonshire.”
They went upstairs together, led by a boy who carried Medora’s travelling basket and the man’s leather portmanteau. The bedrooms adjoined and Kellock invited Medora to choose her room. He then left her luggage there and went into the other himself.
She unpacked with some emotion and wondered when he would come in to see her; but he did not come. She put on a pair of shoes and a white blouse. She washed and did her hair again, for it was untidy. Then she sat down to wait. Presently he knocked at the outer door.