"Where are we going?"
"To St. Petersburg, I think—don't you?"
Rona gasped. She repeated the words mechanically. "To St. Petersburg! Oh, Aunt Bee!"
"It seems to me the safest course. The man looked to me as if he were prepared to be very disagreeable. If we simply go to Paris, he might follow us. But I should judge that the state of his exchequer would render Russia quite out of the question——"
"Oh, how wonderful you are! But we shall want a passport for Russia, shall we not?"
"I could get that anywhere where there is an English Embassy. Let me see, we had better take Gorham, I think."
Gorham was Miss Rawson's maid, a middle-aged, superior woman, attached to her mistress, and fond of Rona. "We will not tell anyone our destination until we are safely off," went on Miss Rawson; "Gorham must be told that we shall be away for a month, at least, but the servants here must be left under the impression that we return without fail on Tuesday evening. I will even order the dinner for that night before I go, and tell cook that I expect a gentleman to dine with us. Then if he does hear that we are away, and makes inquiries, his suspicions will be lulled."
Upon consulting the time-table, they found that all Was easy. By driving to Weybridge they could catch a 5.56 train, reaching Waterloo at 6.49, in plenty of time to dine comfortably and catch the 9 p.m. boat train, by which means they would arrive in Paris at five o'clock next morning.
Miss Rawson had a cousin—one Mrs. Townsend, known in the family as Cousin Sophy—who lived in Kensington and was in feeble health. Aunt Bee unblushingly told her household that she had news that this good lady was suddenly taken worse, and that she must go at once. As she did not like to leave Miss Rona at home alone, she should take her; and as they must put up at an hotel, she should also take Gorham. As they should probably stay only a night, or perhaps two, she wished nothing said in the village of their absence; and, as the Squire was known to dislike Sunday traveling, she wished Jones to drive the luggage cart out by the back way and go along the lane, and not by the high road, that the village might not be scandalized.
"I don't think," said the newly fledged conspirator, "that he will suspect us of bolting, after my asking him to dinner like that. Was it not a good thought of mine to say we were engaged to-day and Monday? Conspiracy comes terribly easy when once one tries it! Cheer up, darling, we shall get off with no trouble at all. And on Tuesday afternoon I will dispatch a telegram to him, saying that I am sorry to have been suddenly called away. Mercifully, I have a balance of several hundred pounds in the bank just now, which I have been saving up to buy furniture with when Denzil and you turn me out! We shall do admirably."