“The people at the station would tell him.”
“But if I met him at the station.”
“He would hear about it on the line.”
It was thus Georgina answered every argument, and at length, worn out by her importunity, Phemie yielded, and was about leaving the room to make the needful arrangements for her departure, when she was stopped once more.
“Whom were you thinking of taking with you,” asked Georgina.
“Either Harris or Marshall,” was the reply. “Harris, if you could spare him, would be the best.”
“Take neither,” was the reply; “Basil would get the truth from them.”
“And do you absolutely wish me to travel to a strange place by myself.”
“Yes—to serve me—to do me such a kindness,” and she took Phemie’s hand and kissed it humbly.
Within an hour Mrs. Stondon drove out of the gates of Marshlands, and started, all alone, to find Basil. Less than most women of the present day had she ever been thrown on her own resources, and the journey which no woman would have regarded as a pleasant one, seemed formidable in the extreme to her. All night she travelled on main lines or cross lines; now the compartment she occupied was shunted on one side at a junction, again she had to get out at some hitherto unheard of station and change carriages, in order to reach her destination, which was a little out-of-the-way village in Yorkshire, where she arrived cold and stiff and weary, next morning at nine o’clock.