And Judith, in a storm of sobs that seemed to melt away all the icy doubts and fears that had assailed her, laid her head upon his breast, and promised that soon, very soon, she would go to the house on the hill never to leave it; and, when she had grown calmer with a deeper peace than she had yet known, he left her—there, in the shadow of the trees—to return in a few hours.
And Judith stole into the kitchen door and up to her room, to find her French maid packing her trunks and be told that "Monsieur awaited her in the salon."
* * * * * *
Her vow had been required of her—that was all she could think, and she prepared herself to keep it.
The manager was clever and adroit in his way. He kept Mrs. Morris busy with him, so that she did not see Judith till she entered to say she was ready; and then, as Mrs. Morris told afterward, she got a "turn." For the Judith who came to say "good-bye," was the same Judith who greeted her at first, gracefully languid, pale, self-composed, and somewhat artificially, if charmingly, courteous.
"There was some difference," Mrs. Morris said, "but I can't just say what."
The difference was that Judith had come a girl, and left a woman.
So for the last time Judith crossed the little garden, feeling strangely unfamiliar with the homely flowers she passed. In the meantime the drivers of the conveyances had conferred with Mr. Morris, and the shorter road they took to the railway station was directly away from the village, away from the house on the hill.
They caught a glimpse of it as they turned a corner, and suddenly Judith seemed to feel the scent of white lilies, and hear an evening chorus of nature's composition. Her hand held tightly a little envelope, in which she had hurriedly slipped something before she left her room.
She was thinking how she could drop it unobserved, when from the shadow of some wild plum trees there issued a disreputable dog—Nip—with Tommy Slick behind him, a basket of wild plums in his hand.