'Oh no; he won't stop away,' he replied, 'for he hasn't got leave; and he wouldn't be allowed to sleep out without it. But he mayn't be back, all the same, till quite late at night—perhaps ten or eleven. It would be hardly safe for you, I think, to wait on till then for him. I mean,' he added apologetically, 'it might perhaps be too late to get a train back to Chiddingwick.'
Maud looked down and hesitated. She perused the hearthrug.
'I think,' she said at last, after a very long pause, 'you must be Mr. Gillespie.'
'That's my name,' the young man answered, with an inclination of the head, rather pleased she should have heard of him.
Maud hesitated once more. Then, after a moment, she seemed to make her mind up.
'I'm so glad it's you,' she said simply, with pretty womanly confidence; 'for I know you're Dick's friend, and I dare say you'll have guessed what's brought me up here to-day, even in the midst of our great trouble. Oh, Mr. Gillespie, did he tell you what he wrote last night to me?'
Gillespie gazed down at her. Tears stood in her eyes as she glanced up at him piteously. He thought he had never seen any face before so pathetically pretty.
'Ye—es; he told me,' the young man answered; hardly liking even to acknowledge it. 'He said he thought of going back at once to Chiddingwick, to take up—well, to keep together your poor father's connection.'
With a violent effort Maud held back her tears.
'Yes; that's just what he wrote,' she went on, with downcast eyes, her lips trembling as she said it. Then she turned her face to him yet again.