"I think you'd better go home, Ernest. I'll write to you after I've seen the boy. Do command silence from both of them. I'm very angry and very distressed, but really nothing can be done till we hear him. My sympathy is entirely with Sabina. Let her go on with her life for a day or two and—"
"She's changed her life and left the Mill. I understand Raymond told her to do so."
"That is a good sign, I suppose. If she's done that, the whole affair must soon be known. But we talk in the dark."
Mr. Churchouse departed, forgot his anxieties in a second-hand book shop and presently returned home.
But he saw nothing of Raymond on the way; and Miss Ironsyde waited in vain for her nephew's arrival. He did not come, and her letter, instead of bringing him immediately as she expected, led to a very different course of action on his part.
For, taken with Sabina's refusal to see him, he guessed correctly at what had inspired it. Sabina had threatened more than once in the past to visit Miss Ironsyde and he had forbidden her to do so. Now he knew from her mother why she had gone, and while not surprised, he clutched at the incident and very quickly worked it into a tremendous grievance against the unlucky girl. His intelligence told him that he could not fairly resent her attempt to win a powerful friend at this crisis in her fortunes; but his own inclinations and growing passion for liberty fastened on it and made him see a possible vantage point. He worked himself up into a false indignation. He knew it was false, yet he persevered in it, as though it were real, and acted as though it were real.
He tore up his aunt's letter and ignored it.
Instead of going to Bridport, he went to his office and worked as usual.
At dinner time he expected Sabina, but she did not come and he heard from Mr. Best that she was not at the works.
"She came in here and gave notice on Saturday afternoon," said the foreman, shortly, and turned away from Raymond even as he spoke.