"You brought me yourself, Miss Naylor. I have complied with your wishes as far as I have known how. You called me. You seemed to want my service. I was proud to be of use."
"You? I was to have met---- I did not call you, Mr Petty. How could you suppose it? I am not intimate with you. We are common acquaintances. That is all. What right had you to intrude? You have done me an irreparable injury. I should not have expected this of you."
"You came out of the hall in haste, Miss Naylor. You spoke to me. You said 'Walter.' I obeyed. I supposed you wanted to get home."
"You----" Margaret did not finish the sentence. Why should she betray herself? she thought. He seemed to have no suspicion as to her intentions. Why should she enlighten him? As he had frustrated her design, her best course was to leave him in his delusion. It would prevent gossip in the hotel. She would acquiesce in his supposition, seeing that her scheme to get away was balked for the present. "I did not know you in the dark, Mr Petty; I thought you were some one else. But it is all right. I have been driven nearly crazy by those jarring fiddles, and the dust and heat. Thanks for your kind readiness to oblige. I am dizzy with headache. I shall go to my room at once, and be asleep before the rest get home."
There was a clatter of hoofs behind them. Margaret drew her wraps over her head, and cowered low in her seat. Was she pursued? Was she overtaken? A little in front shone the lights of the hotel. How welcome they were now! A horseman dashed past at full gallop. He leapt down at the hotel door, and when the buggy drew up, Walter Blount was there to receive Margaret on alighting.
"You took away my buggy, Mr Petty," he observed, when that gentleman's countenance came within the circle of light streaming from the hotel door. "However, you have brought it safely here. Accept my thanks. I will relieve you now." Then turning to Margaret, "Now, dearest! in again!" He followed her, and to Petty's astonishment, the pair were gone.
Joseph Naylor, lounging on the gallery hard by, had seen the passage. He came forward and laid his hand on Petty's arm, as, standing stock-still in his bewilderment, he peered into the darkness after the vanished buggy.
"A strange part you seem to have played in those young folk's comedy--a tantalising part, and laughable, if people knew about it. But we will not tell them, will we? They have been long engaged. Mamma was adverse, perhaps unreasonable. But she will come round. We won't interfere, to spoil sport. Will we, Petty?"
Walter looked round rather ruefully. "You may trust to my holding my tongue, Mr Naylor. My own part in it has not been so distinguished that I need wish it known."
The runaways were on the road to Lippenstock. Walter Blount had spent the evening in the hall ready to follow Margaret as she went out. He had missed her, and waited on, till the party broke up not long after. Then he had found that his buggy was gone, and not seeing the lady, surmised she might be in it--might have got in to await him, and allowed the horse to bolt. He had difficulty in procuring a horse to follow, but in the end succeeded in bribing the man to take a leader out of one of the omnibuses, under a storm of reproaches from the outraged passengers, and had galloped to the Beach in hopes of overtaking and reclaiming his missing "rig"; and he had succeeded, recovering both outfit and passenger.