"Have you never seen this gentleman again?" she asked, still pressing the child's head to her breast, a position he accepted with perfect equanimity.
"Seen him!" repeated Mrs. Mole. "He comes here once a-week regular and pays, I'll say that for him—pays like the bank. 'Handsome is as handsome does,' says I, an' he's a real gentleman, I make no doubt."
"Is he young or old?" pursued Miss Ross. "Tall or short? Dark or fair? How is he dressed? In one word—what is he like?"
Mrs. Mole, whose memory and perceptive powers in general were failing a little, thereby affording wider scope to her imagination, plunged at once into a comprehensive description, much ornamented and idealised, of the person who had lately become so important an object in her quiet every-day life—a description from which Miss Ross felt she could not have identified any individual simply human; but which was happily cut short by a step on the high road, and a click at the little green gate giving access to the front door of the cottage.
"It's not his day, miss," said Mrs. Mole, pulling her guest to the window. "But here he is, for sure, and you can judge for yourself!"
One glance was enough. Miss Ross, dropping Johnnie (in the safest possible attitude) on the floor, fled to the back kitchen panting for breath.
It was Achille! There could be no doubt about it! The same jaunty air, the same gaudy dress, the same manner, gestures, ways, even to the cigar between his teeth—a little stouter, perhaps, and more prosperous looking than when she saw him last; but still unmistakably the husband who deceived, outraged, deserted her, to whom, if she were really married, she felt she had better have tied a mill-stone round her neck, and plunged herself into the sea!
Escape was her first impulse—escape at any price! He must never find her! He must on no account see her here! With a hasty farewell to Mrs. Mole, who thought all the better of her visitor for the modesty that forbade her to confront a strange gentleman, she vanished through the back-door of the cottage, as Picard, for it was no other, entered at the front, and running down a stony path direct to the river-side found herself wishing only that she could swim, so as to make her plunge, and strike out at once for the opposite shore. Glancing wistfully around, there was yet something in the whole situation that struck her as ludicrous in the extreme. Hemmed in by cottage gardens, escape was out of the question on either side, while to retrace her steps along the stony pathway was to return into the jaws of the enemy. At her feet, the river looked cool, shallow, and inviting. Jin wondered if it would be possible to wade. In her perplexity she clasped her hands and began to laugh. Then she thought of her boy and began to cry. This young person was by no means a subject for hysterics; but her feelings had been cruelly wrought on during the last half-hour, and there is no saying what might have happened if assistance had not arrived at the opportune moment from an unlooked-for quarter.
It has been already stated that Helen Hallaton showed less inclination to go to the races than is usual with a young lady, who has a new bonnet in a box up-stairs, and an excuse for taking it out. Frank Vanguard too, contrary to all precedent, declined driving his team to the Course, and remained tranquilly in barracks with the orderly-officer and the mess-waiters, whilst everybody else was off for the day. I do not suppose these young people understood each other; but I fancy they thought they did, and perhaps this was the reason one only started with her companions under pressure, while the other preferred a skiff and a pair of sculls (not an outrigger observe, in which there is only room for the oarsman) to the box of his drag, and a sustained contest for many miles with the iron mouth of his near wheeler.
This young officer then, stripped to the very verge of decency, came flashing up the stream with steady strokes and strong that brought him alongside of Mrs. Mole's cottage, within a few seconds of Jin's flight from that sanctuary. It is not to be supposed that any amount of pre-occupation would prevent our floating dragoon from resting on his oars to admire the rare and radiant vision: a handsome girl clad in bright transparencies, exhaled as it would seem by an ardent sunshine from the teeming margin of Father Thames.