“Mind you come and see us, often. It’s been delightful meeting you. There’s still plenty to talk about.”
He said good-bye to his wife with his usual rather casual geniality.
“Good-bye, old girl. Send me a line. Hope this weather clears off”—and he was gone.
She had been standing by the hall door. As the trap moved down the drive she suddenly made a step forward as though she would go out into the rain after him and call him back. Then she stopped. She was standing on the first step in front of the door; the mist swept about her.
Lady Gale called from the hall: “Come in, dear, you’ll get soaking wet.”
She turned and came back.
To Tony, as he watched the hands of the clock creep round, it seemed perfectly incredible that the whole adventure should simply consist in quietly walking out of the door. It ought to begin, at any rate, with something finer than that, with an escape, something that needed secrecy and mystery. It was so strange that he was simply going to walk down and take Janet; it was, after all, a very ordinary affair.
At quarter-past eleven he found his mother alone in her room.
He came up to her and kissed her. “I’m going off with Maradick now,” he said.
“Yes,” she answered, looking him in the eyes.