"You have left nothing behind, I hope?" said Charles, civilly, for the sake of saying something.
"She have left nothing," said Mrs. Smith, swimming forward with dignity, "and she have also took nothing. I have seen to that, Sir Charles."
"Good-bye, then," said Charles. "Right, coachman."
Mrs. Carroll's eyes had been wandering upward to the old house rising above her with its sunny windows and its pointed gables. Perhaps, after all the sordid shifts and schemes of her previous existence, she had imagined she might lead an easier and a more respectable life within those walls. Then she looked towards the long green terraces, the valley, and the forest beyond. Her lip trembled, and turning suddenly, she fixed her eyes with burning hatred on the man who had ousted her from this pleasant place.
Then the coachman whipped up his horse, the dog-cart spun over the smooth gravel between the lines of stiff, clipped yews, and she was gone.
CHAPTER XXX.
Mr. Alwynn had returned from his eventful morning call at Vandon very grave and silent. He shook his head when Ruth came to him in the study to ask what the result had been, and said Dare would tell her himself on his return from London, whither he had gone on business.
Ruth went back to the drawing-room. She had not strength or energy to try to escape from Mrs. Alwynn. Indeed it was a relief not to be alone with her own thoughts, and to allow her exhausted mind to be towed along by Mrs. Alwynn's, the bent of whose mind resembled one of those mechanical toy animals which, when wound up, will run very fast in any direction, but if adroitly turned, will hurry equally fast the opposite way. Ruth turned the toy at intervals, and the morning was dragged through, Mrs. Alwynn in the course of it exploring every realm—known to her—of human thought, now dipping into the future, and speculating on spring fashions, now commenting on the present, now dwelling fondly on the past, the gayly dressed, officer-adorned past of her youth.
There was a meal, and after that it was the afternoon. Ruth supposed that some time there would be another meal, and then it would be evening, but it was no good thinking of what was so far away. She brought her mind back to the present. Mrs. Alwynn had just finished a detailed account of a difference of opinion between herself and the curate's wife on the previous day.