So she was going after all.
“Like a flight,” mused Cashel. “What’s after the Old Girl?”...
He grasped the situation a little more firmly next day.
The preparations for assembling Lady Charlotte in the hall before departure were well forward at eleven o’clock, although there was no need to start for the station until the half hour. A brief telegram from Oswald received about half-past ten had greatly stimulated these activities....
Unwin, very white in the face—she always had a bilious headache when travelling was forward—and dressed in the peculiar speckled black dress and black hat that she considered most deterrent to foreign depravity, was already sitting stiffly in the hall with Lady Charlotte’s purple-coloured dressing-bag beside her, and Cashel having seen to the roll of rugs was now just glancing through the tea-basket to make sure that it was in order, when suddenly there was the flapping, rustling sound of a large woman in rapid movement upon the landing above, and Lady Charlotte appeared at the head of the stairs, all hatted, veiled and wrapped for travelling. Her face was bright white with excitement. “Unwin, I want you,” she cried. “Cashel, say I’m in bed. Say I’m ill and must not be disturbed. Say I’ve been taken ill.”
She vanished with the agility of a girl of twenty—except that the landing was of a different opinion.
The two servants heard her scuttle into her room and slam the door. There was a great moment of silence.
“Oh, Lor’!” Unwin rose with the sigh of a martyr, and taking the dressing-bag with her—the fittings alone were worth forty pounds—and pressing her handkerchief to her aching brow, marched upstairs.
Cashel, agape, was roused by the ringing of the front door bell. He opened to discover Mr. Oswald Sydenham with one arm in a sling and a rug upon the other.
“Hullo, Cashel,” he said. “I suppose my room isn’t occupied? My telegram here? How’s Lady Charlotte?”