By the time they had found the bit of Moorish building encased in the Gothic, it was twilight, and as they proceeded to their carriage, Mrs. Wilbur bethought herself of the distance they were from Paris.
“Is there an express train?” she asked, hastening her steps.
Erard looked at his watch. “The rapide at midnight,” he replied. “I had no idea we should take so long in the chateau!”
“Is there no other train?”
Erard shook his head. “And we can’t take the rapide. It’s beastly getting into Paris at four A.M. There’s a good hotel at this end of the town, and to-morrow we can take an early train and see Chârtres on our way home.”
He spoke unconcernedly, as if on the whole fate had arranged well for them. Mrs. Wilbur still walked on hastily, annoyed at her own carelessness, and perplexed. As they reached the entrance, she said, coldly,—“I think I had best take the rapide. We can go to the hotel and dine, and then I can wait at the station. Perhaps they will telegraph for a compartment for me.”
Erard looked at her quizzically. “As you like, but—we shall have a good many expeditions to make sooner or later, and you can’t often manage to return the same day—”
She made no reply, suspecting that whatever she might say would seem foolish and prudish to Erard. It distressed her that she should be caught again so quickly in these petty matters of personal propriety. Yet to insist upon making a disagreeable night for herself by taking the rapide seemed also foolish, as if she made too much altogether of convention. And if she did not yield now to Erard’s mode of life, he would force her to it in his own good time. The only alternative would be to break with him entirely; she could not make that sacrifice.
The midnight journey grew more distasteful to her than ever, once in the old hotel, with the kindly hostess bustling in and out, arranging a fire, and making preparations for a comfortable dinner. As they came to the fruit and nuts after a rich, bourgeois meal, she made up her mind to accept the position and get the fun of it.
“Yon can find another hotel easily, I don’t doubt,” Mrs. Wilbur remarked tentatively. “For I think I shall have madame warm a chamber for me—”