"It was really your own fault; it was really very wrong of you to let us talk, really wrong. I hope we have not said anything bad."
And Mrs. Dorriman made no answer. She gave a slight bow, feeling too heart-sore and too unhappy to speak. Yes, how did all that money change hands? How was it that she was left so poor and allowed to drift wherever her brother chose to make her drift? For the hundredth time this question, which she now heard asked in a careless voice by a stranger, started up before her. Was it true that one day she would know? This last conversation drove the words of Christie into the background for a time, and when she arrived at the station she was in a whole whirl of mingled feelings, in which doubt and grief and indignation and hope all seemed struggling together.
Jean, helpful and alert, saw her into a cab and her luggage arranged on it and then bravely said,
"Only for to-day. I will be down seeing you to-morrow."
Then the tie between her and her mistress seemed quite broken as she lost sight of her, and, sitting down upon her kist, heedless of the curious looks of the "fremd folk" she had come amongst, good-hearted, brave Jean burst into bitter tears and would cry, she said, to herself. Yes, now Mrs. Dorriman was not there to see it she would cry, it would do her good.
She was sitting on her big box—the kist that contained all her worldly wealth—the tears streaming down her face and her pocket-handkerchief crammed into her mouth, when a porter came to her, too busy to be fully sympathetic, and yet with a certain gruff friendliness that was very comforting to her.
"And where are you bound for, my bonny woman?" he said, wisely ignoring her tears; "are you going to bide in the toon or are you going on by another train?"
Jean, called back to self-command, rose, and, fumbling in the bosom of her gown, where she kept her birth certificate, her money, her keys, and other valuables, drew out, after some false attempts, the address of the place she was going to, and, in a short space of time, her kist was put upon a hurly and she was following it thither.