Had Kitty held a weapon of any sort then, she would certainly have tried to kill him.
* * * * *
In the evening her aunt brought her some tea, set it down, and retired without a word. But no restraint was put on her movements. Restraint was unnecessary. Where could she go, penniless? Later, when she heard Symington’s voice in the kitchen, she stole downstairs and out of doors.
In the dusk, an hour afterwards, she stood at her old place, waiting the roaring approach, the thundering dash past, of the London mail. Colin Hayward would not be on board, she told herself, and wondered vaguely why, after all, he had left early in the morning. And now he would be in London, and things there would already be making him forget her. She did not love him as she judged a maid should love a man—but oh! how gladly she would have yielded now to his tender arms and his kind voice. . . .
The train was coming—it was nearly on her. Something white fluttered from a window. But the signal could not be for her!—and yet with her heart in her eyes she gazed. And just for a tick of time she had a glimpse of Colin’s face. It was all over.
She laid her arms on the fence, and bowed her face on them, and wept as never she had wept in all her one-and-twenty years—such tears of bitterness, such tears of loneliness.
Perhaps Sam, quitting his post on the railway, may have wondered at the bowed figure, but he went off discreetly by his one way, a hundred yards further down the field.
In the starry darkness Kitty came to herself, and slowly made her way to the only home she had. Emotion had weakened her physically, but her spirit yet struggled strongly in the toils. She had still nearly twenty-four hours of freedom, such as it was. To-night it was too late for any persecution from Alec Symington, who surely must have left the cottage some time ago, and gone home, for it was now nearing eleven o’clock.
But on the road, at the gate of the field, he was waiting.