“When and where shall I see you, Roger?” she asked. “This—this dreadful mistake will be put right, of course, but I suppose it will be a few days at least—and till then?”
“That will be all right,” Snell interposed. “Mr. Carling’s solicitors will arrange everything, and you will be able to see him at any reasonable time for the present.”
“Thank you. Who are your solicitors, Roger?”
“The only firm I know anything about are Twinnings—Sir Robert’s solicitors, you know; but they’ve never done any business for me personally. I’ve never needed it. I’d better communicate with them. I suppose I shall have facility for that?” he added, glancing at Snell. “I don’t know anything about these things, or the procedure, myself.”
“You’ll have every facility,” Snell assured him. “But though I don’t want to hurry you, we must be getting off now—within ten minutes, in fact—and you’ll want to take some necessaries with you. Perhaps Mrs. Carling will put them together? I’m sorry, madam, but I must not lose sight of Mr. Carling. Duty’s duty!”
“I will fetch them,” she said, and exchanged a long, silent glance with Roger ere she left him. Still she would not—dare not—trust herself to think of anything but the task of the moment, and swiftly collected and packed in his bag all he would be likely to want—“only for a few days” she told herself, to sustain her courage—and returned to the parlour within the stipulated time.
Even when the moment of parting came, and she clung to him in a last embrace, she did not weep.
“Good-bye, my darling, till to-morrow,” he said in a hoarse, broken whisper. “It will be all right in a few days; try not to fret—to worry. Oh, my God, how hard it is!”
“I will be brave,” she whispered back—“brave as you are, my own, my beloved. God guard you, and show your innocence before all the world—soon!”
She stood in the porch and watched him, all her soul in her eyes, managed even to smile and waft a last kiss to him as he leaned forward for one final glimpse. Then, as the sound of the motor died away in the distance, she went back to the parlour and sat down, in dumb, stricken, tearless misery.