She ran down to the hall, and sought and found a railway guide. All at once she remembered that a guest who had once been summoned away very hurriedly from Yelverton at night had caught a train at some junction a little distance away. By so doing he had reached London at a very early hour.
Caroline decided to follow his course. The express paused at Swaile Junction somewhere before four o'clock, but she would start off now.
To have to sit there and wait till the Brentons came back, and to go into explanations was utterly beyond her. Besides, she felt half afraid that Mrs. Brenton might try to dissuade her from going, and Caroline could not endure that. It was not only the woman who called to her, it was the man who loved this woman—the man whom she loved herself—who seemed to clamour to her to stand between Camilla and what she intended to do.
She scribbled an explanation to Agnes Brenton, and slipped Camilla's letter inside.
"It may be only a chance," she wrote; "but I cannot help feeling that I shall find her in London. She will never dream that one of us would follow her, and if human hands can drag her back from this miserable mistake, I want mine to be the hands to do it."
She intended to keep Dennis in ignorance of her going, but she took one of the other maids into her confidence.
"Don't let there be any fuss," she said, "but I must get up to London as quickly as I can. I am sorry not to wait for Mrs. Brenton, but you will give her that letter. Can you manage to keep Dennis downstairs while I run up and slip on my hat and coat?"
"Yes, miss, of course. But where are you going from, there's no trains now, miss?"
"There is a train that stops at Swaile Junction somewhere between three and four, I am going to catch that."
"Swaile," said the maid; "but that's miles away, miss. How will you go?"