"To Paddington Station," she said—"I am going out of town. Stop at the first telegraph office on your way."
The man touched his hat. He thought she seemed very ill, but it was his place to obey instructions, not to proffer sympathy. At the telegraph office she got out, moving like one in a dream and sent a wire to Miss Leigh.
"Am staying with friends out of town. Don't wait up for me."
Back to the brougham she went, still in a dream-like apathy, and at
Paddington dismissed the chauffeur.
"If I want you in the morning, I will let you know," she said, with matter-of-fact composure, and turning, was lost at once in the crowd of passengers pouring into the station.
The man was for a moment puzzled by the paleness of her face and the wildness of her eyes, but like most of his class, made little effort to think beyond the likelihood of everything being "all right to-morrow," and went his way.
Meanwhile Miss Leigh had returned to her house to find it bereft of its living sunshine. There were two telegrams awaiting her,—one from Lord Blythe, urging her to start at once with Innocent for Italy—the other from Innocent herself, which alarmed her by its unusual purport. In all the time she had lived with her "god-mother" the girl had never stayed away a night, and that she was doing so now worried and perplexed the old lady to an acute degree of nervous anxiety. John Harrington happened to call that evening, and on hearing what had occurred, became equally anxious with herself, and, moved by some curious instinct, went, on his way home, to Jocelyn's studio to ascertain if Innocent had been there that afternoon. But he knocked and rang at the door in vain,—all was dark and silent. Amadis de Jocelyn was a wise man in his generation. When he had returned to confront Innocent again and find her, as he had suggested, either recovered from her "temper" and "calm and reasonable"—or else "gone"—he had rejoiced to see that she had accepted the latter alternative. There was no trace of her save the unlocked private door of the studio, which he now locked, putting the key in his pocket. He gave a long breath of relief—a sort of "Thank God that's over!"—and arranged his affairs of both art and business with such dispatch as to leave for Paris in peace and comfort by the night boat-train.
CHAPTER XII
That evening the fitful and gusty wind increased to a gale which swept the land with devastating force, breaking down or uprooting great trees that had withstood the storms of centuries, and torrential rain fell, laying whole tracts of country under water. All round the coast the sea was lashed into a tossing tumult, the waves rolling in like great green walls of water streaked with angry white as though flashed with lightning, and the weather reports made the usual matter-of-fact statement that "Cross-Channel steamers made rough passages." Winds and waves, however, had no disturbing effect on the mental or physical balance of Amadis de Jocelyn, who, wrapped in a comfortable fur-lined overcoat, sat in a sheltered corner on the deck of the Calais boat, smoking a good cigar and congratulating himself on the ease with which he had slipped out of what threatened to have been a very unpleasant and embarrassing entanglement.
"If she were an ordinary sort of girl it wouldn't matter so much," he thought—"She would be practical, with sufficient vanity not to care,—she would see more comedy than tragedy in the whole thing. But with her romantic ideas about love, and her name in everybody's mouth, I might have got into the devil's own mess! I wonder where she went to when she left the studio? Straight home, I suppose, to Miss Leigh,—will she tell Miss Leigh? No—I think not!—she's not likely to tell anybody. She'll keep it all to herself. She's a silly little fool!—but she's—she's loyal!"