“But could it ever have entered any one’s head that such an improbable thing should actually happen?” said Roy, as he mused over the story. “To think that Sardoni should get change for his note, and Darnell steal it on the very day that Swanhild had given you that unlucky contribution to the debt-fund!”
“It is just one of those extraordinary coincidences which do happen in life,” said Sigrid. “I believe if every one could be induced to tell all the strange things of the kind that had happened we should see that they are after all pretty common things.”
“I wonder if there is a train to Plymouth to-night?” said Roy. “I shall not rest till I have seen Darnell. For nothing less than his confession signed and sealed will satisfy James Horner. Do you happen to have a Bradshaw?”
“No, but we have something better,” said Sigrid, smiling; “on the next landing there is Owen, one of the Great Western guards. I know he is at home, for I passed him just now on the stairs, and he will tell you about the trains.”
“What a thing it is to live in model lodgings!” said Roy, smiling. “You seem to me to keep all the professions on the premises. Come, Frithiof, do go and interview this guard and ask him how soon I can get down to Plymouth and back again.”
Frithiof went out, there was still a strange look of abstraction in his face. “I scarcely realized before how much he had felt this,” said Roy. “What a fool I was to be so positive that my own view of the case was right! Looking at it from my own point of view I couldn’t realize how humiliating it must all have been to him—how exasperating to know that you were in the right yet not to be able to convince any one.”
“It has been like a great weight on him all through the autumn,” said Sigrid, “and yet I know what he meant when he told Swanhild, that it had done him good as well as harm. Don’t you remember how at one time he cared for nothing but clearing off the debts? Well, now, though he works hard at that, yet he cares for other people’s troubles too—that is no longer his one idea.”
And then because she knew that Roy was thinking of the hope that this change had brought into their lives, and because her cheeks grew provokingly hot, she talked fast and continuously, afraid to face her own thoughts, yet all the time conscious of such happiness as she had not known for many months.
Before long Frithiof returned.
“I don’t think you can do it,” he said. “Owen tells me there is a train from Paddington at 9.50 this evening, but it isn’t a direct one and you wont get to Plymouth till 9.28 to-morrow morning. A most unconscionable time, you see.”