As a matter of fact, the hour of Robert Champion's release was drawing near. The twelve months were coming to an end. The probability was that they had seemed much longer to him than to her. To her it seemed that the hour of his release would sound the knell of the end of all things. She awaited it as a condemned wretch might await the summons to the gallows. As, with the approaching hour, the tension grew tighter, the balance of her mind became disturbed. Temporarily, she was certainly not quite sane.
One afternoon she crowned her display of eccentricity by rushing off home almost at a moment's notice. On the previous day--a Tuesday--she had arranged with the landlord to continue in his hotel for a further indefinite period. On the Wednesday, after lunch, she came to Mrs Plummer and announced that they were going home at once. Although Mrs Plummer was taken wholly by surprise, the suggestion being a complete reversal of all the plans they had made, Miss Arnott's manner was so singular, and the proposition was in itself so welcome, that the elder lady fell in with the notion there and then, without even a show of remonstrance. The truth is that she had something more than a suspicion that Miss Arnott would be only too glad to avail herself of any excuse which might offer, and return to England alone, leaving her--Mrs Plummer-- alone with Evans. Why the young lady should wish to do such a thing she had no idea, but that she did wish to do it she felt uncomfortably convinced. The companion managing to impress the lady's maid with her aspect of the position, the trunks were packed in less than no time, so that the entire cortège was driven over to catch the afternoon train, leaving the smiling landlord with a thumping cheque, to compensate him for the rapidity with which the eccentric young Englishwoman thought proper to break the engagements into which she had solemnly entered.
That was on the Wednesday. On the Saturday--by dint of losing no time upon the way--they arrived at Exham Park. On the Sunday Robert Champion's term of imprisonment was to come to an end; on that day he would have been twelve months in jail. What a rigid account she had kept of it all, like the schoolboy who keeps count of the days which bar him from his holidays. But with what a different feeling in her heart! She had seen that Sunday coming at her from afar off--nearer and nearer. What would happen when it came, and he was free to get at her again, she did not know. What she did know was that she meant to have an hour or two at Exham Park before the Sunday dawned, and the monster was set free again. She had come at headlong speed from the Lake of Como to have it.
CHAPTER IX
[THE BEECH TREE]
When the travellers returned it was after nine o'clock. So soon as they set foot indoors they were informed that dinner was ready to be served; an announcement which, as they had been travelling all day, and had only had a scanty lunch on the train, Mrs Plummer was inclined to hail with rapture. Miss Arnott, however--as she was only too frequently wont to be--was of a different mind.
"I don't want any dinner," she announced.
"Not want any dinner!" Mrs Plummer stared. The limits of human forbearance must be reached some time, and the idea that that erratic young woman could not want dinner was beyond nature. "But you must want dinner--you're starving; I'm sure you are."
"Indeed? I don't see how you can be sure. I assure you, on my part, that I am not even hungry. However, as you probably mean that yours is a case of starvation, far be it from me to stand in the way of your being properly fed. Come! let us go in to dinner at once."
The imperious young woman marched her unresisting companion straight off into the dining-room, without even affording her an opportunity to remove the stains of travel. Not that Mrs Plummer was unwilling to be led, having arrived at that stage in which the satisfaction of the appetite was the primary consideration.