Imogen retraced her steps again to the outer margin of the wood. Then she turned, and walking slowly, found herself in twenty minutes or so at the gates of the inner drive. She looked at her watch mechanically: no, she must not go in yet, it was too soon. It was a winter day, but she did not feel cold, only very, very tired. She looked about for a seat. There were several, she knew, in among the shrubberies, which were here very thick. She turned down a little path, bordering, though she did not know it, a side entrance to the stables; there was a rustic seat there, almost an arbour, for it was shaded by the trunks and branches of a group of old elms. There she sat down, and for the first time the pent-up misery burst out. She could keep it in no longer, but broke into a passion of convulsive sobs.
She did not cry loudly. She was too worn out and spent to do so, even though for the first few moments her abandonment was so great that she gave not a thought to the possibility of attracting attention. But it was a very still day; sounds carried clearly. Beatrix, on the lookout for a scene of some kind as she came hurrying down the drive, caught the faint gasping sobs not many yards off, and stood, still to listen.
She had been forced to make one of the luncheon party in the coverts, sorely against her will; for Mabella, on pretext of a headache, had skilfully backed out of it, and Trixie more than suspected her motive. Florence was not to be back from Catborough till too late, and Alicia flatly refused to undertake the management of the party without one or other of her sisters. But Trixie succeeded in escaping in time to get back to the house not very much later than the hour at which Rex was expected. She wasted some minutes, however, in looking for Mabella, and hearing from a servant that Miss Forsyth had gone out some time before by herself, her suspicions redoubled, and she set off, racing along in her usual reckless harum-scarum fashion. Major Winchester, so far as she could discover, had not arrived (nor had the dogcart sent for his luggage); the truth being that Rex, by good-fortune having met Florence at the side entrance, was at that moment in close confabulation with her in the library.
But the strange sounds which reached her made Trixie slacken her pace. What could it be? At first she was by no means sure that they were not those of some animal in distress, in which case, to do her justice, the wild girl would not have been without some feeling of pity.
“Can it be one of the dogs?” she thought, as she pushed aside the thick-growing shrubs and made her way “cross country,” as she would have described it, in the direction of the gasping sounds. But she was quickly undeceived. On the rough bench lay or crouched Imogen, her face hidden, her whole figure shaken by sobs, now and then broken by low moans, equally piteous to hear. The Helmonts were not given to vehement grief or vehement feeling of any kind, except when Beatrix, the only really hot-tempered one, got into a passion, and the display of it was almost like an unknown language to them. In Trixie it seldom roused anything but a sort of contempt. But if this was her first sensation on seeing Imogen’s prostration of suffering, it was soon mingled with other emotions. Pity of a kind, and quickly succeeding to it remorse—of a kind also—and speedily overmastering both, extreme and unreasoning fear.
“Imogen,” she called out, though not very loudly, and instantly concealing herself again.
“Imogen, what is the matter?”
But there was no reply. Trixie’s terror increased.
“Can she be having some sort of a fit?” she said to herself; and as there was a good deal of cowardice, moral and otherwise, mixed up with the rough animal courage of the girl, no sooner had the idea struck her, than she turned and fled, rushing off, heedless of aught else, in search of some one or something, she scarce knew what.
At the turn of the path—the same path down which Imogen had wandered, and which, it will be remembered, led into a side road to the stables—Beatrix ran full tilt against a man, walking quickly towards the house. It was the younger of her cousins, by good-luck; for, in her state of excitement, she would scarcely have cared who it was—silly Percy Calthorp, or Newnham, the stately butler, would have suited her equally well.