The abbé looked bewildered.
"Of whom, then? They would have kept him at Iselle, but he would not hear reason. He tried to cross on foot at the height of the storm. I had an idea that it might be so. Yes, yes, the Almighty God made this known to me, and so I came."
And then he said, turning away:
"She will be here this afternoon—I have spoken to her myself; she is now upon her way from Sierre."
There was no response. Benny stood at the window and looked down the valley as though fearing to see her carriage already upon the high road.
CHAPTER XXVII
BENNY SETS OUT FOR ENGLAND
He left the hospice at three o'clock, while it was yet light, and the journey to Brigue could be made in safety.
He had not spoken to her, but he knew that she was then in the chapel where the dead lie, and that she was aware of his presence. An instinct told him that it were better they should not meet in such a house of shadows. He had already determined to set out for England that night, and to think of Switzerland no more. In his own country he would find the place and the hour.
Of the future, his ideas were vague and indefinable. A call of ambition had returned in the interlude of reckoning, and found him resolute in response. A new world opened to his vision, a world which should recognise his genius and bid him profit by it. he would go to England this night and make himself known to those who would honour him. Thereafter strenuous days must follow, and the reaping of the harvest. He was as one whose life's task began upon a foundation of success; the stones of whose house were already hewn. In England he would come to his own. They waited for him impatiently there.