Thus worked upon and primed, Beatrix, as usual, agreed to carry out Miss Forsyth’s very precise and exact instructions. But Mabella’s dictatorial and scornful tyranny had overshot the mark.
“I know what she’s after,” thought Trixie. “She’s to have all the fun, to be in at the death; but I’m not. And then she’ll make some flimsy excuse afterwards! I know you, Miss Mabella Forsyth, and I can plot and plan too—ah, well, we shall see.”
It was a bright, clear, slightly frosty day. “The perfection of a day for a quick, brisk walk,” thought Imogen, as in ample time to meet a passenger by the train in question, walking up from the station, she let herself out by a side door which opened on an unobserved path joining the long winding avenue at some distance from the house. It had not been without difficulty that she had escaped from her mother, or avoided telling her of Major Winchester’s return. The girl’s head and heart were in a state of ferment, and to her overstrained nerves Mrs Wentworth’s fidgety excitement and anxiety was becoming almost unendurable. Added to this was a considerable element of perplexity and sore indignation—by every post she had looked for another and more coherent letter.
“After writing like that” she thought, and not unreasonably, “he had no right to leave me all these days in this way.” And now, Trixie’s communications had still farther increased her mental distress by the jealousy of Florence they had skilfully suggested.
“I believe he meant to consult her before he said anything more to me,” thought Imogen, though the next moment her loyal trust in Rex’s perfect honour caused her to discard the notion with disgust at herself for having entertained it. “No, not after going so far,” she reflected. “Yet, but for Trixie, I could never have known he was coming. Poor Trixie! she is far truer after all, than Florence. I wonder if a letter can have miscarried,” was her next idea, and one which so plausibly explained things, that she could not help turning it over and over in her mind. It had already occurred to Mrs Wentworth, and she had not failed to suggest it to Imogen.
“If we knew his address, I almost think you might write to him,” she had said. But Imogen turned upon her sharply.
“If I did, it would only be to enclose his letter in an envelope and send it back to him,” she said. “If—if it is possible that he wrote it impulsively, and is regretting it, do you think I would move one little finger to recall him?”
And on the whole Mrs Wentworth saw that it was best for her to keep her fingers, for the present anyway, out of the pie.
The road—the latter part of it at least—from Cobbolds to The Fells, was straight and direct. There was no possibility of missing any one on his way to the house within a mile. The first gates opened on to a sort of continuation of the drive—less carefully kept than the part within them, but still a private road. And before emerging on to the highway it led through a little fir-wood, where, as somewhat screened from the observation of any curious passers-by—not that many such were probable, for the men were shooting in a different direction that day, and a large party had started to join them at luncheon—Imogen had determined to try to meet Major Winchester.
She walked quietly, half unconsciously hoping by so doing to calm her momentarily-increasing agitation. The first time she emerged from among the firs there was no one to be seen in the stretch, of open road before her. So she retraced her steps, and it was not till she had traversed the little wood two or three times that she descried a tall, familiar figure moving quickly towards her. And in another moment, considerably to her surprise, she saw that she was herself—as she supposed—recognised. For Major Winchester took off his cap and waved it towards her.