Miss Challoner had pleaded fatigue, but it was long before she slept. Her desperate problem leered at her half through the night, and it was not until she had reached some sort of a decision that she could achieve slumber.
She was shocked to realize that for a few breathless moments she had forgotten Sophia in a brief vision of herself wedded to his lordship. “So that’s the truth, is it?” said Miss Challoner severely to herself. “You are in love with him, and you’ve known it for weeks.”
But it was not a notorious Marquis with whom she had fallen in love; it was with the wild, sulky, unmanageable boy that she saw behind the rake. “I could manage him,” she sighed. “Oh, but I could!” She did not permit herself to indulge in this dream for long. Marriage, on all counts, was out of the question. He did not give the snap of his fingers for her; he must marry, when the time came, some demure damsel of his own degree; and — the greatest bar of all — she could not steal a bridegroom from under Sophia’s nose.
Having disposed thus of his lordship, Miss Challoner set herself resolutely to think of her own future. Vidal had shown her the impossibility of a return to Bloomsbury; it would be equally impossible to seek shelter with her grandfather. After pondering somewhat drearily upon this sudden isolation, she dried her eyes, and tried to think of an asylum. At the end of two hours, being a female of considerable strength of mind, she decided that her wisest course would be to remain in France, to assume a new name, and to try to obtain a post as governess in a respectable French household.
She began, eventually, to compose a letter to her mother, and in the middle of a phrase which had become strangely involved, she fell asleep.
She partook of chocolate and a roll in bed next morning, and when she at length came downstairs to the private parlour, she was met by the discreet Fletcher, who informed her, not without a note of severity in his voice, that his lordship’s arm had broken out bleeding again in the night, and looked this morning uncommon nasty. His lordship was still abed, but meant to travel.
“Has a surgeon been sent for?” inquired Miss Challoner, feeling like a murderess.
“His lordship will not have a surgeon, madam,” said Fletcher. “It is the opinion of Mr. Timms, his lordship’s valet, and myself, that he should see one.”
“Then pray go and fetch one,” said Miss Challoner briskly.
Fletcher shook his head. “I daren’t take it upon myself, ma’am.”