Chris felt giddy with a shock which was not all a surprise. She hardly knew how she got out of the shop, nor how she reached the house of her friends. But she told them that she must go back to her mother the very next day; and the two ladies with whom she was staying, not without a little mischievous laughter at the girl’s expense, and some malicious suggestions which showed them to be not without penetration, let her go.
As the train bore her back to Wyngham, Chris seemed to be in a dream. The hope which had so long lain dormant in her heart had now sprung up into vivid life. She knew that her lover was alive.
Much to her disgust, it was Mr. Bradfield who met her at the station. However, circumstances had now cleared him from the worst of the charges of which she had secretly accused him; if Dick was alive, as she believed, it was certain that John Bradfield had not murdered him. So John, who was as gruff as ever, but rather shy, got a more civil greeting than he had ventured to hope.
“I’ve got the phæton outside,” said he. “Your mother was afraid of the dog-cart; she said you would be. But she was wrong, I know. You don’t look like an invalid; you’ve come back cured.”
“Yes,” she answered, drawing a quick breath. “I—I am quite well now, thank you.”
“Any more disposed to be kind than you were, eh?”
“That depends,” answered Chris, whose emotion was by this time too strong for her to conceal.
John Bradfield looked at her with curiosity.
“Depends on what?”
But Chris waited a moment, and then she gave no direct answer.