‘But that would mean betraying Diamond Jubilee, and Aunt Grace would be sure to send him back to that wicked old Mother Grimes,’ said Emmeline, arguing with her conscience, as people do when they cannot make up their minds to the course of action which they know to be right. ‘Diamond Jubilee would be ruined body and soul. Perhaps some day he would be even hanged! No, I must think of some other way.’
But wander about as she might she could think of no other plan. She did indeed picture herself pleading eloquently with Aunt Grace not to send Alice away, but her conscience told her that even if she succeeded, she would still be wronging the girl by allowing her to remain under suspicion. Besides, Aunt Grace might not listen to her any more than Jane had done.
‘Well, anyhow, Jane can’t do anything till Aunt Grace comes home,’ she said to herself at last, ‘and there’ll be plenty of time for settling what to do before then, so I won’t think about it any more just now. It’s quite time to be seeing about Diamond Jubilee’s newspapers.’
The thought struck Emmeline that she might take Diamond Jubilee her own supper at the same time that she carried the newspapers to him. It would be an unusually good opportunity to do so now that Jane and Cook were both out; and, though she had meant him to live on nuts and chocolate from that day forward, it seemed kinder to break him in more gradually. So thought Emmeline, with some vague instinct of trying to make up for any wrong she might be doing Alice, by being specially nice and unselfish to Diamond Jubilee.
A few minutes later she was standing on the outskirts of the wood with her glass of milk in one hand and her biscuit and bundle of newspapers in the other. It had been rather difficult to climb the railings without spilling the milk, and she could not help hoping she should not have to carry it very far before she came across Diamond Jubilee. She had half-expected to meet him already, lurking somewhere about the lane, or even in the garden itself; indeed, she had peeped into the summer-house just to make sure he was not there, but, so far there had been no sign of him. Surely she would find him soon.
Walking slowly and cautiously for fear of spilling her milk, she made her way on towards the Feudal Castle. At every few yards she paused, and looked round and behind her. Just at first she did this in the hope of seeing Diamond Jubilee, but as the trees grew thicker her glances over her shoulder became more and more uneasy and hurried. Now that she was alone there in the eerie moonlight, the familiar wood was a frightening, uncanny place, full of weird shadows and dim half-seen shapes—shapes which turned into trees when she stared at them hard, but which seemed to change slyly back into something quite different as soon as she looked away to see what was making that odd creaking noise on her other side. Once, when an owl gave a loud, unearthly hoot, it was as much as Emmeline could do not to fling down what she was carrying and run home in mad panic, but she was a child who never could bear to be beaten, so she set her teeth and walked steadily on.
After walking for a quarter of an hour, which seemed infinitely longer than any other fifteen minutes in the whole course of her life, she reached the Feudal Castle. It looked so horribly dark and lonely and deserted as it loomed up among those ghostly moonlit trees, that it was some moments before Emmeline could summon up courage to open the worm-eaten door and step into the darkness inside, but at last she forced herself to do so.
She started, and trembled all over at the echo of her own footsteps on the bare floor.
‘Are you there, Diamond Jubilee?’ she asked, in a voice which sounded to herself so unnatural that it frightened her more than ever.